Will we see driverless cars on the streets of London this year?

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Waymo, a California-based company, plans to roll out a taxi service in London by the end of this year.

But the big smoke poses a raft of new challenges compared to the US - zebra crossings, electric bikes and narrow roads, to name a few.

To roll out its services Waymo will need to meet the requirements of the Automated Vehicles Act 2024, which requires companies to prove that driverless cars are as safe and as a “careful and competent human driver”.

It’s still not clear what threshold driverless cars will have to meet in the UK in order to meet this standard.

It might be determined, for example, by the number of crashes per thousand miles of driving.

One of the challenges Waymo cars face is pedestrians walking onto the street, which happens much more frequently in the UK compared to the US, where jaywalking is illegal in most states.

Another is our reliance on eye contact at Zebra crossings, and when cars pull out onto streets.

And then there’s the weather: last year in Arizona, heavy rain brought Waymo’s fleet to a standstill as their sensors stopped working.

Waymo says it is confident in its ability to operate in London and this week raised $16bn in funding to scale its robotaxis internationally, bringing the company’s valuation to almost $110bn.