The Munich Announcement
Waymo announced on August 25, 2026, that it will begin manually mapping Munich's streets within weeks, the first visible step toward a public robotaxi launch it is targeting for the end of 2027. The blog post, titled "Servus München: Waymo is Coming to Germany," frames the expansion as Waymo's move into the European Union, following its earlier announcement of a 2026 launch in London.
Waymo says it will run only electric vehicles in Munich and points to its own safety record to justify the expansion: more than 350 million fully autonomous kilometers driven, plus a claimed 16 times fewer serious-injury crashes, 14 times fewer pedestrian-injury crashes and 6 times fewer cyclist-injury crashes than human drivers, according to the company's own blog post. None of those figures involve Germany; they describe Waymo's existing US operations, where it says it completes hundreds of thousands of paid rides every week.
What Waymo Does Not Have Yet
Waymo does not hold approval from Germany's KBA, the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, to run autonomous vehicles on Munich's roads. Waymo's own announcement says only that it is "engaging with local, state and federal officials" on the approvals it will need, and outside coverage of the announcement confirms those approvals are still pending.
That is why the first vehicles on Munich's streets will have a human driver behind the wheel, gathering the high-definition maps and training data Waymo needs before it can apply to test autonomously. Manual mapping does not require the KBA's Level 4 sign-off; running driverless, or even running with a safety driver under Level 4 rules, does.
Momenta Already Cleared the Regulator
Momenta, a Chinese autonomous-driving company, received a nationwide Level 4 testing permit from the KBA around July 30, 2026, about four weeks before Waymo's Munich announcement, according to electrive.com and several other outlets that covered the approval. The permit lets Momenta run Level 4 test drives on urban roads across all of Germany at once rather than city by city, and industry coverage describes Momenta as the first Chinese company to receive that nationwide grant.
The permit is not a commercial license. Electrive.com's own coverage is explicit that "a test permit is not an operational licence" and that "many additional approval steps lie between testing and a service." Momenta has not announced a start date for the robotaxi service it has discussed with Uber for Munich since a partnership the two companies announced in September 2025. Two other companies got a German permit earlier still:
| Company | KBA status in Germany | Since | Commercial passenger service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobileye / Volkswagen | Autonomous-vehicle testing permit (urban, rural, autobahn up to 130 km/h) | 2020 | Not yet |
| Momenta | Nationwide Level 4 testing permit | July 2026 | Not yet, no date announced |
| Waymo | No KBA approval yet, approvals pending | N/A | Targeted end of 2027 |
What This Means If You Operate in the German Market
Germany has had a legal framework for Level 4 autonomous driving since 2021, the first country in the European Union to write one, and it has already been used: Mobileye and Volkswagen have tested under German AV permits since 2020, and Momenta cleared a nationwide Level 4 testing permit in July 2026. Waymo's 350-million-kilometer safety record is real, but it describes a different country's roads under a different regulator, and it does not substitute for the KBA sign-off Waymo still needs in Germany.
For a German or EU operator, insurer or regulator watching this space, the number worth tracking is not Waymo's crash-rate multiple, it is who the KBA clears next and on what terms. Munich now hosts a live comparison of a US and a Chinese operator applying for the same permits under the same rules, and so far this summer the KBA moved first for the Chinese one.
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