Product1 publisher2 min readPublished
Zagreb's driverless Uber rides run up against a 1,500-car-a-year EU approval ceiling
Pony.ai and Verne have taken the safety driver out of a 22km route in Zagreb and left the bookings inside Uber. The partners want more than 2,000 cars on European roads, and the union-wide small series path allows 1,500 a year.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Pony.ai and Verne are carrying passengers in Zagreb with nobody in the driver's seat, the first fully driverless rides on public roads anywhere in Europe.
- The cars work one fixed 22km route linking Verne's headquarters, a central business district and Zagreb's airport, with Pony.ai's software driving and Verne monitoring remotely.
- In London, Uber and Wayve began Britain's first robotaxi service on 3 September with a licensed safety driver legally responsible in every car.
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint A European fleet built on the small series route is competing for an allowance smaller than the fleet already announced, so someone at Pony.ai has to decide which country gets units first.
- decision Every additional city needs its own national permission, so the expansion calendar is set by ministries and not by the software release schedule.
- exposure Wayve and Uber keep a licensed human carrying legal responsibility in London, while a problem on the Zagreb route lands on remote supervision under Croatian rules.
- capability Verne shows a European operator can run a driverless commercial service without building the autonomy stack, as long as it can supervise remotely and hold a national clearance.
You open Uber in Zagreb and the car that pulls up has nobody in the driver's seat. It has no front passenger seat either. Verne took that one out to make room for luggage and fitted a large screen where the backrest would have been, InsideEVs reported [5]. The base vehicle is a Chinese crossover, the Arcfox Alpha T5 [5]. Pony.ai's seventh-generation system makes the driving decisions, Verne monitors the cars remotely, and the sensor set is redundant across 360 degrees [4].
The humans came out in two steps. In April the same partnership put Europe's first commercial robotaxis on Zagreb's roads with trained operators on board, and in August the Uber bookings began, still with a safety driver [6]. Now the seat is empty [1].
What is announced is much larger than what is running. Pony.ai said with Uber in August that more than 2,000 of its robotaxis would go on European roads, in Zagreb and four further cities [7]. A fully automated car can reach EU-wide approval only through the small series route under Article 41 of the bloc's type-approval regulation [8], and Germany's KBA puts that ceiling at 1,500 units a year for the whole union [9]. Divide 2,000 by 1,500 and the announced fleet equals about 1.33 years of the entire union's annual small series allowance, and that is before any other carmaker claims a single unit of it [17]. The Commission lifted the limit in March for cars that park themselves; robotaxis were not covered [10].
The Zagreb rides are cleared under Croatian rules, and Croatian clearance stops at the Croatian border [11].
London went the other way. Uber and Wayve started Britain's first robotaxi service on 3 September with a licensed safety driver in every car, legally responsible throughout [12], and Transport for London approved the vehicles as private hire cars, not autonomous ones [13]. Croatia took the person out of the car; Britain kept the person and got the simpler licence.
Two questions are doing separate work here: does the product work with no human in the loop, and does the approval travel. Zagreb clears the first and not the second. London clears the second by not attempting the first, because private hire licensing already exists and an autonomy category does not have to. Marko Pejkovic, Verne's chief executive, said the rides were "a major milestone on the path to scaling autonomous mobility in Europe" [14]. Pony.ai already runs driverless services in four Chinese cities [15]. In Europe the map fills in one country at a time, and WeRide is heading to Denmark with GreenMobility in 2027, its sixth European country [16].
What to watch
- Whether the Commission extends its March small series relief beyond self-parking cars to fully automated ride-hailing vehicles.
- Which four further cities Pony.ai and Uber name, and which national regulator clears each of them.
- Whether Britain licenses a Wayve car with no safety driver, and on what legal basis Transport for London approves it.