Waymo has not confirmed that it will arrive in Spain. But your documentation says things

Waymo has registered three legal entities in Europe in fifteen days: Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam. They add to the I had already been in Munich since June. However, no release announcement accompanies the records.

what has happened. The French company has an explicit corporate purpose: passenger transportation with autonomous vehicles. That is, the activity for which we know Waymo. Waymo Iberia was established in Madrid at the beginning of June. And the Dutch company points to something else, computing infrastructure, not transportation as such.

The four share a shareholder and management team.

What it doesn’t mean. A commercial registration like this is not equivalent to a launch date or an assured landing. Uber promised robotaxis in Madrid this year and, when asked for details, there was no response. In fact, the DGT was not aware of any request from him at that time.

What does it say?. The name chosen for Spain is not coincidental. Waymo Iberia, and not Waymo Spain, suggests that the target includes Portugal, which A few weeks ago it opened a convenient legal framework for testing autonomous vehicles.

Three of the four subsidiaries are in countries with advanced level 4 regulation. Only Holland breaks the pattern, and its subsidiary looks at data, not transportation. So it seems clear that Waymo is registering subsidiaries where the regulatory framework is in its favor.

The precedent. Waymo just broke its alliance with Uber in Phoenixhis first city, and has recovered the cars for his own app.

The number is small (a little more than a dozen vehicles), but the signal is not: as soon as a fleet gains its own brand and demand, as Waymo has presumably done after years of service, it has an obvious incentive to stop sharing between 20% and 30% of each run with an intermediary. In this case, Uber.

The contrast with France. France allows commercial driverless operations from 2021 in specific areas, and An autonomous WeRide van is already circulating in Valence under that framework.

The pending question It’s not if Waymo lands this year. It is whether Spain will have a completely ready legal framework, also in terms of insurance companies and municipal regulations, before the question becomes urgent. Waymo has purchased the option of being ready to disembark in Spain whenever it wants, but it remains to be seen if the country will also be ready by then.

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Featured image | Xataka