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Volkswagen Wants to Become the “European Champion” in Robotaxis: Smart Industrial Move or Too Late to the Race?
The battle for autonomous driving has been going on for years, but has so far been dominated mainly by American players such as Waymo and Tesla. Europe largely watched from the sidelines.
Volkswagen now wants to change that. Through subsidiary MOIA, Volkswagen is going all in on robotaxis, with a launch in Los Angeles this year (in collaboration with Uber) and a rollout to European cities starting in 2027. The ambition is not modest: by 2033, there should be 100,000 autonomous vehicles on the road. That is not an experiment. That is an industrial strategy.
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The ID. Buzz as a Driving Robot
The basis of the project is the electric Volkswagen ID. Buzz, equipped with an array of sensors, cameras and lidar. However, the “brain” of the system does not come from Volkswagen itself, but from the Israeli technology company Mobileye. That distinction is crucial.
Waymo develops its technology in-house. Tesla attempts the same through its own AI and camera-based systems. Volkswagen opts for a partnership model in which VW’s hardware is combined with external software expertise. That makes entry faster, but also creates dependency.
The Business Model Is Different From Tesla’s
Where Tesla dreams of a global network of autonomous cars that let owners earn money, Volkswagen chooses a more classic, European approach.
MOIA wants to offer complete packages to cities and transport operators: leasing vehicles, providing maintenance, delivering software management and integrating fleet management into existing mobility networks. That is less Silicon Valley and more German industrial logic.
According to VW, the market for autonomous mobility services in the US and Europe could reach 350 to 450 billion euros by 2035. The company sees a potential annual revenue of more than 10 billion euros within seven years.
Europe’s Trump Card: Complexity
A striking argument from Volkswagen is that Europe can actually be an advantage. While Waymo is mainly active in sunny, straightforward American regions, Volkswagen tests its vehicles in Hamburg and other European cities where snow, rain and complex traffic situations are daily fare.
That sounds logical. Autonomous driving in ideal conditions is one thing. Autonomous driving in wintry European chaos is another. Still, we need to stay realistic: Waymo has already driven more than 125 million autonomous miles. Volkswagen is at around one million kilometres of testing. That difference is enormous.
The Real Question: Who Controls the “Brain”?
Some analysts are sceptical. They point out that traditional carmakers rarely own the core software. If Mobileye supplies the intelligence, Volkswagen essentially remains a producer of hardware.
And in tech markets, hardware is rarely where the biggest margins lie. This is the fundamental tension in the robotaxi race: Do carmakers become platform players, or do they remain suppliers of bodywork and batteries? Volkswagen appears to be betting on scale, local integration and strong relationships with European cities as its differentiator.
AutoNext Take
This is one of Volkswagen’s most important strategic moves in years. Not because robotaxis will massively take over our cities tomorrow, but because Volkswagen is implicitly acknowledging that classic car sales alone will not be enough in the future.
Margins on cars are under pressure. Electrification costs billions. Software increasingly determines value. Autonomous mobility is therefore not a gadget. It is an attempt to create a new revenue model.
Still, we remain cautiously optimistic rather than euphoric. Volkswagen is starting relatively late. It relies on external technology. And the market can, as we saw earlier with Cruise (GM), be merciless when safety or regulation works against you.
But if there is one European manufacturer with the scale, production capacity and political connections to attempt this, it is Volkswagen. The next three years will be crucial. If MOIA succeeds in effectively serving European cities operationally before Tesla and Waymo, the playing field will change fundamentally.
If that fails, Volkswagen indeed risks being reduced to a “hardware supplier” in a software-driven mobility world. And that is exactly the scenario they are now trying to avoid.
