Driverless taxis are officially coming to our neighbour down south. Waymo, the autonomous ride-hailing unit of Google parent Alphabet, will begin accepting bookings for rides in its self-driving cars in Singapore from 2028, making the republic its first market in Southeast Asia. The announcement was made yesterday at Google’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Pasir Panjang, The Straits Times reports.
The first vehicles will arrive on Singapore roads within the coming months, and the initial fleet will consist of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs – the electric crossover that has long served as Waymo’s workhorse in the US, where over 2,000 units have been converted into autonomous taxis. Fleet numbers for Singapore have not been disclosed.
However, there won’t be empty driver’s seats just yet. Ahead of the 2028 commercial launch, the cars will be driven by trained AV specialists so the systems can learn Singapore’s road and weather conditions, with testing centred on the western part of the island, beginning with Labrador and HarbourFront. The specialists will be hired locally, as will staff for fleet maintenance and customer support – Waymo registered its Singapore subsidiary back in May.
Transport minister Jeffrey Siow said Waymo’s entry will see the number of autonomous vehicles providing passenger service in Singapore grow from 16 today to several hundred within the next two years – though he noted that this remains a small fraction of the more than 70,000 taxi and private-hire drivers there.
Existing trials by Grab and ComfortDelGro in Punggol – where autonomous shuttle trials began last year – have carried some 20,000 passengers, with 99% saying they would recommend the experience. Deployment is set to expand to Sengkang General Hospital, and later to towns such as Tampines North and Tengah.
Siow positioned driverless vehicles as a complement to public transport rather than a replacement for drivers, saying new jobs will be created in fleet management, remote vehicle operation, maintenance and data analysis. “Some of these jobs will be open to taxi and private hire car drivers. Our operators have launched training programmes to help drivers who are interested in these roles. In addition, the government will subsidise up to 90% of salaries during training,” he said.
Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the company aims to “complement Singapore’s mobility ecosystem with a safe, convenient and reliable option”, citing tens of millions of rides provided in the US since 2020. Studies have found Waymo’s vehicles to be 94% less likely to be involved in crashes causing serious injury, and to record 84% fewer injury-causing collisions with cyclists, compared to human drivers. The company also expects its service to plug first-and-last-mile gaps – in San Francisco, more than a third of Waymo rides start or end near public transport stops.
Singapore will be Waymo’s second market in Asia – commercial services in Tokyo are planned for 2027 – and the company set up a South Korean subsidiary in July, though no timeline has been given for operations there. Waymo currently operates in 15 US cities.
As for Malaysia, we’ve yet to feature in Waymo’s plans, but driverless taxis aren’t entirely off our radar – Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi service was reported last year to be eyeing both Singapore and Malaysia. Whether anything comes of that here, Singapore’s 2028 rollout means the region’s first proper taste of a Waymo will be just across the Causeway.
