WeRide and Uber Bring Spain's First Robotaxis to Madrid

Self-driving cars are coming to Spain. On June 2, autonomous driving company WeRide and ride-hailing giant Uber announced plans to launch the country's first commercial robotaxi pilot in the Region of Madrid — the pair's first joint entry into Europe.

The service is expected to begin later this year, with riders hailing a driverless WeRide car directly through the Uber app they already use. It's a concrete sign that robotaxis are moving from a handful of test cities into mainstream European transport.

Why Madrid, and why now

WeRide (NASDAQ: WRD) is the world's first publicly traded robotaxi company, with vehicles deployed in more than 40 cities across 12 countries. It already runs fully driverless commercial services with Uber in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and Riyadh is expected to follow.

Madrid is the natural next step. WeRide calls the region one of Europe's most attractive robotaxi markets, citing strong demand for rides, a large urban population, and supportive local policy. The pilot runs in partnership with Madrid's Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid), which gives the project the regulatory backing autonomous services need to operate on public roads.

Why this matters: regulation, not technology, is usually the bottleneck for self-driving cars. A clear legal path in a major European capital is exactly what the industry has been waiting for.

How the service will work

At launch, the cars won't be fully empty. The fleet will start with trained safety operators on board and scale up "as key performance milestones are met," including the eventual move to fully driverless rides across core parts of the city. In plain terms: a human stays in the car until the system proves it's safe enough to remove them.

The rollout leans on WeRide's "asset-light" model — instead of buying and running the fleet itself, WeRide supplies the self-driving technology while partners handle the cars and day-to-day operations. Here that partner is AVOMO, a Moove Cars Group company that already manages Uber's autonomous fleets in Austin and Atlanta, running roughly 400 vehicles with a team of more than 200 specialists.

The cars run on WeRide's "WeRide One" technology platform and were validated using the company's general-purpose simulation system before hitting Madrid's streets. WeRide holds autonomous driving permits in eight markets — China, the UAE, Singapore, France, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, and the US.

What it means for the robotaxi race

Madrid is the fourth of 15 cities the two companies committed to under a previous global agreement, with 11 more planned by 2030. Across that partnership, WeRide and Uber say they intend to deploy tens of thousands of robotaxis worldwide.

For Uber, the deal deepens a strategy of plugging multiple self-driving providers into its app rather than building the cars itself. For WeRide, it's a beachhead in Europe at a moment when US rivals like Waymo and Tesla are racing to expand their own driverless fleets.

The competitive signal is clear: the robotaxi fight is going global, and the company that can stitch together technology, local partners, and regulators fastest gets a head start in each new market.

What the companies are saying

"Launching driverless Robotaxis in Madrid, one of Europe's fastest-growing urban environments, demonstrates our ability to operate safely in complex real-world conditions," said Dr. Tony Han, founder and CEO of WeRide. "Together with Uber, we're combining our autonomous driving technology with their mobility platform to accelerate commercialization at scale."

Sarfraz Maredia, Uber's Global Head of Autonomous Mobility and Delivery, framed Madrid as a launchpad: "With a clear regulatory path and strong local partners, Madrid is a natural place to become a leading European market for AVs."

Manuel Puga, CEO of Moove Cars Group, said the launch marks "an important milestone in AVOMO's international expansion" after nearly two years operating with Uber in the US.

What's next

Watch for an exact start date and the initial service area, both still to be confirmed. The real milestone to track is the shift from safety-operator rides to genuinely empty cars — the same progression WeRide and Uber already completed in the Gulf.

If Madrid follows the Abu Dhabi playbook, fully driverless rides could arrive within a year or two of the pilot, with the fleet growing from a handful of cars to hundreds as the data proves out.

The bottom line: a Madrid commuter will soon be able to open Uber, tap a button, and get picked up by a car with no driver. That ordinary-feeling moment is how autonomous driving stops being a demo and becomes part of daily life — and Europe is now firmly on the map.