Waymo, GO and Nihon Kotsu aim for Tokyo driverless taxis in 2027

Waymo, the Tokyo taxi app GO, and Nihon Kotsu said on 15 September that they intend to start Japan first fully driverless taxi service in Tokyo in 2027. The plan is a Level 4 commercial operation: no safety driver in the cabin, booked through both the GO app and the Waymo app, with an initial fleet that would grow toward about 100 vehicles in selected neighbourhoods.

The three companies have been running public-road tests with a person in the seat since April 2025, covering seven of Tokyo 23 special wards. Those tests used Jaguar I-Pace battery-electric cars fitted with Waymo fifth-generation Driver, the same stack the company already runs without a driver in more than a dozen American cities. The Japanese runs were meant to teach the software how Tokyo actually works: narrow streets, dense pedestrian crossings, night foot traffic after last train, and taxis that stop in places a San Francisco robotaxi would treat as illegal.

GO listed shares jumped as much as 9.7 percent on the announcement, to 3,560 yen, the sharpest intraday rise in three weeks. The market is pricing a simple idea. Tokyo taxi companies are short of drivers. An unmanned car that can work after the subway shuts is a product they can sell. GO president and Nihon Kotsu chairman Kazuo Kawanabe has called the project the closer for the driver shortage. He said he spent years pushing Waymo to look beyond the United States after an early rebuff.

The service will not start on a set calendar date. The companies say they need licences under the Road Traffic Act and the Road Transportation Act from the National Police Agency, the transport ministry, the Tokyo metropolitan government, and the relevant wards. Until those stamps exist, 2027 is a target, not a timetable. Waymo co-chief Tekedra Mawakana said the commercial service is meant to take paying passengers from day one, not linger in an employee-only pilot.

Japan already has limited automated buses on fixed routes. An on-demand taxi in mixed central Tokyo traffic is a different problem. Nissan and Uber have their own Tokyo robotaxi trial scheduled for the second half of 2026, still with supervision. If Waymo, GO and Nihon Kotsu get the unmanned permit first, they will set the template other operators have to match: insurance, incident reporting, remote assistance centres, and the question of who is liable when a vehicle running Waymo software, dispatched by a Japanese taxi firm, hits a cyclist in Shinjuku.

The industrial logic is two-sided. Waymo gets a dense, high-fare city and a partner that already has taxi licences and a dispatch network. Nihon Kotsu and GO get a way to keep serving late-night demand without finding thousands of extra drivers. Tokyo late trains already leave a gap that human taxi drivers fill at a premium. An empty Jaguar that can be hailed at 1 a.m. from either app is the product they are selling to regulators as much as to riders.

What the announcement does not settle is scale. One hundred cars is a demonstration fleet in a city that moves millions of people a day. The firms have not published a fare, a coverage map beyond key Tokyo neighbourhoods, or a plan for snow, typhoon rain, or festival crowds that close streets without warning. Those details will decide whether 2027 is a launch or another postponed pilot.

For now the fact on the table is narrower and still new. Three named companies have put a year on Japan first unmanned urban taxi, named the vehicle, named the apps, and said they will go to the public from the first day they are allowed to charge a fare. Regulators, insurers and rival taxi firms now have a date they can argue with. That is more than Tokyo had on Sunday.