Wayve launches on-road testing and development hub in Germany

According to Wayve, Germany’s driving environment - ranging from high-speed Autobahns to urban complexity and winter road conditions - provides an ideal setting to refine and validate Wayve’s AI-powered driving technology.

In a statement, Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, said: “With its rich automotive heritage and deep engineering expertise, Germany is a perfect place to accelerate the development and deployment of AI-powered driving technology. I look forward to partnering with Germany’s world-leading manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers to bring safe, scalable, and production-ready AI software to vehicles worldwide.”

The new Baden-Württemberg-based testing and development hub will focus on enhancing Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) features, such as lane change assistance, and advancing automated driving capabilities for future production-ready solutions. The site in Germany also provides access to a pool of engineering talent.

Dr Patrick Rapp, State Secretary at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism of the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg said: “Innovations in the areas of vehicle automation and digitalisation are a key driver of the current structural change in the automotive industry and a basic requirement for maintaining the technological competitiveness of the German automotive industry. As a leading developer of embodied AI technology, Wayve thus meets a network of strong partners and users in Baden-Württemberg.”

Wayve said its entry into the German market marks a key step in its global expansion, following a $1.05bn in Series C funding round and successful testing programs in the UK and US.

Wayve is developing the customisable, vehicle-agnostic AI models for autonomous driving. Its next-generation AV2.0 technology is said to learn from data, adapting to new unseen driving environments without reliance on high-definition maps or complex sensors. By training its end-to-end AI on vast and diverse driving data, Wayve said it aims to redefine the safety, efficiency, and scalability of automated driving.