What role can Britain play in global autonomous vehicle services
Autonomous vehicle (AV) services will generate economic value on many levels. Passengers will benefit from cheaper, safer transport. Businesses will benefit from lower logistics costs. These will be the topics of future pieces. Today’s focus is on the AV supply chain and the economic activity that will grow as the supply chain grows. This piece explores where Britain, potentially, could emerge as a global winner.
The supply chain has hundreds of firms that transact between each other to deliver a working, scaled, commercial AV service. Firms design the hardware, write the software, operate the fleets, and provide the legal, insurance, and cybersecurity services. The question is how much of this economic activity from the ‘global supply chain’ ends up in Britain.
How much value an individual firm contributes to a nation varies. It depends on factors such as where they are headquartered and thus where they pay tax, where they employ people, and where they spend. Throughout the piece I will use the phrase ‘value capture’ to point to where Britain benefits from this high-value economic activity; skilled employment, tax revenue, reinvestment, intellectual property. Within British firms and on British soil. The focus on British ownership is not for its own sake, but because domestically headquartered firms are more likely to keep their R&D, leadership, and decision-making here over time. A Waymo depot in London creates British jobs. A British-owned AV company with its headquarters here is more likely to keep creating them
This piece maps the global supply chain, establishes British capacity to meaningfully contribute to key parts of it and outlines some scenarios of how the UK could benefit.
The AV supply chain
This map focuses on notable parts of the supply chain that are most likely to grow from the rise of AV services.
Hardware
The physical components specific to autonomous vehicles: sensors, cameras and the compute hardware that runs onboard.
Global landscape
China is positioned to be the global hardware leader for AVs. AV vehicle bodies are typically Electric Vehicles (EV) and China has been rapidly obtaining increasing market shares of the global EV market. China has proven the capacity to produce EVs at scale and thus to benefit from economies of scale. The Chinese firm Geely is due to supply Waymo with thousands of purpose-built robotaxis and so will the South Korean firm Hyundai.
Meanwhile the Chinese automaker Chery has recently announced that its latest EVs will sell at a price as low as $10,000 / £7,545.15. The mature Chinese EV supply chain and the AV supply chain are interconnected, Chery is one of the suppliers of the Chinese AV firm WeRide.
The amount of cars retrofitted for commercial robotaxi services is in the order of 1000s, in terms of fleet sizes Waymo has about 2000 vehicles, whilst Chinese operators range from a few hundred vehicles to ~1,500 vehicles. Each of these companies are planning to scale, and are announcing partnership with automakers, what the industry calls ‘OEMs’, to lead to this scaling. The immediate future sees more retrofits, partial design modifications and eventually mass-scale purpose-built vehicle designs.
For purpose-built vehicles, Zoox, a firm owned by Amazon, has the US’ first and only bespoke robotaxi production facility. The Chinese autonomous delivery firm Zelostech has purpose-built over 20,000 vehicles.
Most AV operators don’t reveal the exact economics of their hardware supply chain, however the firm Pony.AI announced a 70% Bill-of-materials cost reduction between their 6th and 7th generation vehicle models.
UK position
The UK’s highest profile involvement in providing AV hardware has been Waymo’s use of the British Jaguar I-pace vehicles, however the Jaguar I-pace has since been discontinued and UK involvement in providing vehicle bodies on the scale of tens of thousands of vehicles is unlikely.
The manufacturing edge that the UK has is in specialised industrial camera and sensor making. However, these are economically competitive on quality rather than quantity or price.
However, the manufacturing element of hardware creation is not necessarily the most profitable part. In many cases, the business that sets the design and holds the intangible assets, the intellectual property, the high-skilled researchers, and the brand, captures far more value than the one that builds the product. It is these elements that the UK excels at. A famous example of this split is Apple and Foxconn: Apple’s net profit margin sits around 25%, Foxconn’s around 2%.
British hardware design firms that can enter this supply chain include: Pragmatic Semiconductor, XMOS and Arm in chip design, Envisics in niche automotive sensor systems, and Prodrive in specialised engineering and vehicle manufacture to name a few.
Autonomous driving software
The machine-learning systems that enable a vehicle to navigate without human input. This is the most capital-intensive area to enter, which could lead to higher profit margins relative to the other parts of the supply chain. The AV software supply is also the one where the winner-takes-most dynamics are the most likely to occur.
Global landscape
The most advanced autonomous vehicle software provider is Waymo. They operate in 11 cities across the US and have conducted over 170 million miles of autonomous driving with passengers.
There are several Chinese autonomous vehicle providers that operate on similar orders of magnitude in vehicle fleet size and are catching up in terms of total miles. For example, WeRide is notable for its vehicle variations including a Robobus, Robovan and Robosweeper which displays a flexibility in their driving software. Meanwhile Pony.AI has one of the world’s largest commercial autonomous freight services. Chinese AV firms have also displayed the largest geographical range of operations, including several Chinese cities but also the driving environments of the Gulf states, and increasingly, Europe. The largest European player in this space includes the Swedish freight firm Einride and the Estonian delivery firm Starship technologies, although they operate on a smaller scale.
Waymo’s co-CEO has explicitly called for the company to license out their software and self-driving capabilities to enable personal autonomous vehicle ownership, which could massively increase the future size of the AV market.
UK position
Notable British examples include Wayve, Oxa and Aurrigo. Wayve is developing driving software that does not require LiDAR and is form-factor agnostic, meaning it could run across vehicle types.
Oxa is already exporting its service, carving out commercial niches in industrial use cases, where becoming the most trusted provider could translate into a substantial international market. Aurrigo, based in Coventry, is already deploying autonomous vehicles across seven international airports including Zurich and Amsterdam Schiphol.
The UK also has a successful autonomous bus trial in Cambridge. Because autonomous bus services are less profitable than robotaxis, deployments elsewhere have been limited, which leaves Fusion Processing’s ‘CAVstar’, the technology behind the Cambridge service, in a strong global competitive position.
Analysis
Waymo’s findings on the scaling laws in autonomous driving suggest that producing the best self-driving software will only get more expensive over time. Efficiency gains grow fastest when the AI models are bigger, there’s more data to train on, more computers to run. This raises the barrier to entry and rewards whoever can sustain that investment longest.
However, the most impressive autonomous driving software have focused on robotaxis. If specialised software is economically competitive for different service types, such as for freight or industrial use cases, then these niches would be available for British players as it would lead to less direct competition with the best-capitalised and most experienced players.
Fleet operations and other software
This category includes everything that is required to run a service once the AV vehicles exist: depot management, cleaning, charging infrastructure, fleet logistics, and the consumer-facing app.
Global landscape
The consumer-facing layer is currently dominated by ride-hailing apps, either from established platforms like Uber and Lyft or from apps owned by the AV software providers themselves.
Supporting software markets are more nascent. The clearest opportunity lies in the fleet coordination layer: software that manages parking and complex navigation across shared spaces such as shopping centres or industrial sites, as well as coordinating large numbers of personal autonomous vehicles. This software category is already mature for industrial use cases but remains largely unrealised for robotaxis. Simulation software is another area, which can either be built in-house, as Waymo has done, or outsourced for specific use cases. Y Combinator recently backed a startup that helps robotaxis pay for parking autonomously, though whether such tools will be bundled into the core driving software or remain separate services is unclear.
Beyond software, fleet operations also depend on physical infrastructure: depot development and EV charging installation; here there’s been a mix of providers, but subsidiaries of Uber and Lyft have played a major role.
UK position
Britain has limited existing involvement here. Uber has partnered with Wayve for its robotaxi service, and both Uber and Lyft have partnered with Baidu’s Apollo Go for its planned London service.
Fleet operations tell a similar story. Early deals suggest foreign-owned firms are likely to lead, with Waymo’s partnership with Moove, a UAE-headquartered company, as the clearest example. The notable domestic exception is Addison Lee, a major London-based ride-hailing operator whose leadership has indicated willingness to operate AV services.
Enabling and assurance services
The legal, insurance, and cybersecurity firms in this category sit around the industry rather than inside it. But they are, nevertheless, necessary for commercialisation. They advise, underwrite, and certify, rather than operate. They are engaged as experts specifically because AV services carry novel risks.
Global landscape
The US, China, and the Gulf states are already developing enabling service ecosystems to support AV scaling. In March 2026, Beijing announced it would pioneer dedicated insurance products for automated vehicles. Chinese actuarial and insurance bodies are standardising contract terms, calculating premium rates, and building a cross-industry data exchange system to support policy issuance and claims. Products will be rolled out in batches as they mature. These products will likely be paired with existing international Chinese Robotaxi and Autonomous vehicle deployments. In the US, the enabling-services ecosystem is emerging in a less centralised and state-led fashion. For instance, notably in California, state regulation has led to new specialised reporting requirements, insurance and self-insurance frameworks.
UK position
This is where the UK’s position is strongest relative to the other parts of the supply chain. Britain is the world’s fourth largest exporter of goods and services. Its largest service export categories are financial, legal and business services. British legal firms are already global and fluent in the AV Act’s liability framework, well positioned to advise on deployments overseas, particularly if other countries adopt similar legislation given the reach of English common law and the comprehensiveness of the AV Act. London’s insurance market have historically led in pricing novel and complex risk, making them natural candidates to underwrite AV liability as fleets scale.
The UK also has a ‘connected and automated’ industry ecosystem supported by a government-affiliated grant programme distributed by Zenzic, which helps accelerate domestic supply chain development.
The Role of Standards and Regulation
In no country on earth can a scaled commercial AV service exist without supporting and enabling regulation. Countries that regulate and permit early cultivate a domestic market, and thanks to the UK’s Automated Vehicles Act 2024 the country is amongst the first to legislate for self-driving vehicles. The legislation was comprehensive and forward-looking. It not only allowed for a robotaxi permitting scheme, as the US has done, but also set a legal framework to handle trickier examples. The framework distinguishes between when the driver is and isn’t in control of their vehicle, which provides a legal foundation for other driverless vehicle form factors and services, most notably personal vehicle ownership.
Britain is currently leveraging international frameworks such as UNECE processes to shape global regulations in a way that can benefit its domestic commercial interests. Britain’s input, including via the BSI, to the UN’s ‘UNECE frameworks’ has been described as “instrumental” in shaping cybersecurity rules that now apply across 54 member countries. Firms that help write the rules enter new markets already fluent in them, and British services in certification, legal, and safety assurance can grow as a result.
Standards, when done well, provide clarity for the private sector. I discussed a notable British emergent AV standard in a piece on Autonomous bus procurement.
Variables that will shape the future
A few variables will shape to what extent the British economy is involved in the global AV supply chain.
The speed and timing of UK AV deployment
If a domestic market grows faster than the global market, then local firms can integrate into the supply chain and then export their relevant product and services to other countries that follow. The relative early timing of the UK AV Act is a favourable sign for this variable.
Capital intensity for supply chain participation
Some elements of the supply such as the AI driver software take billions of pounds to develop. This poses an issue for UK economic participation: the largest British firms are more risk averse than US firms or Chinese firms, whilst British venture-backed high-growth startups struggle to raise the scale of funding needed to participate. Even when they do raise capital, they must often turn to US investors, which reduces the longer-term odds of the company remaining in Britain.
If costs fall further then more firms will be able to compete. The UK’s strengths in applied expertise and specialised design will become more relevant to the markets.
Vertical integration versus modularisation of the supply chain
If the market stays integrated, with one company controlling the vehicle, the software, and the customer platform as Waymo does today, the firms with the largest head starts and deepest capital will dominate, leaving fewer openings for British firms. If the supply chain modularises, more niches open up.
There is reason to expect integration to persist longer in AV than in other high-tech sectors. When a crash could be the fault of the sensor, the software, or the route optimisation system, and responsibility is difficult to assign, value concentrates in firms that can offer a complete safety case. As standards are formalised, the market may shift towards modularisation, but liability pressures are likely to slow that transition.
Scenarios
The optimistic scenario: Britain as the rulebook, risk, and contract hub
Britain does not own the leading consumer robotaxi network, but it does not need to. In this scenario, Wayve succeeds in its cross-platform bet, becoming a globally recognised autonomous driving software provider whose technology runs across vehicle types and geographies. Wayve software helps enable mass-scale public transportation and personal autonomous vehicles as an equal amongst other major providers. That success anchors British credibility in the AV industry and generates the kind of track record that attracts further investment and talent.
Beyond Wayve, Britain captures value by providing a coordination of existing services. When a foreign operator wants to launch across multiple markets, British law firms resolve the liability questions. When a pension fund needs to understand what it is underwriting before financing a fleet expansion, London markets price the risk. When a procurement team needs to certify that a system meets the required safety standard, British assurance firms provide the sign-off.
This scenario is reinforced by Britain’s early regulatory lead. The Automated Vehicles Act gave domestic firms a head start in building safety case history and commercial track records. More importantly, Britain’s active role in shaping standards through international bodies means that the frameworks others eventually adopt were written with British commercial interests in mind. Firms fluent in those standards enter new markets with a structural advantage.
This scenario depends on two conditions. Western AV operators need to scale faster than Chinese alternatives, otherwise the enabling services for the largest deployments get captured by countries which are already scaling AV deployments. Cross-jurisdictional complexity needs to remain high enough that a coordinating service hub accumulates expertise, but not so fragmented that local players, e.g. a Nigerian legal firm for Abuja deployments, are strongly preferred.
The middle scenario: specialised software niches and selective value capture
Britain does not own a consumer-facing software or app at scale, and the largest consumer autonomous vehicle markets are dominated by American and Chinese operators. However, the AV software market has some competition depending on use case and this is where Britain finds its footing.
Firms like Oxa and Aurrigo carve out defensible positions in airports, ports, logistics yards, and controlled-environment shuttles. These niches reward deep cross-sector familiarity and systems integration over consumer network effects, which suits Britain’s industrial and engineering base. British autonomous public transport finds some international deployments as public transit operators seek trusted, certified solutions. The value capture is real but bounded: Britain becomes a second or third tier player globally, with a handful of exportable software products and a credible reputation in specific verticals.
The risks to this scenario are meaningful. The Netherlands, the United States, and China are significantly larger logistics hubs and are likely to generate their own specialised driverless solutions for the most common industrial challenges. A Dutch port operator or a Chinese freight company has both the scale and the incentive to develop in-house autonomy for their specific environment rather than buying British.
Britain also captures a share of enabling services in this scenario, legal, insurance, and assurance work that accompanies each deployment, though at lower volumes than in the optimistic scenario. Consumer benefit from foreign-operated robotaxi services is real, but the productive capacity and strategic advantage from those deployments largely accumulates elsewhere.
The realistic scenario: domestic adoption, limited global capture
In this scenario, no single failure is required. It is simply what happens if current trajectories continue without meaningful intervention.
Foreign AV firms own the software. Foreign consumer-facing apps own the customer relationship. Foreign capital finances the fleets. Britain gets local operations work, a slice of legal and insurance revenue, and real consumer gains from cheaper and more convenient transport, but the productive capacity and strategic advantage accumulate elsewhere. The value flows through British streets without much of it staying there.
The British startups that might have competed are underfunded relative to their American and Chinese counterparts. Wayve grows, but meaningfully slower than other competitors, perhaps Tesla surpasses Wayve in the camera-less autonomous vehicle bet. Other British startups get acquired before reaching maturity, with R&D and decision-making gradually migrating to wherever the acquirer is headquartered. Britain has seen elements of this before with ARM.
In this world Britain is a consumer of the AV revolution rather than a producer of it, much as it is a consumer of social media, search, and cloud computing today. The analogy is instructive. British users benefit enormously from Google and Amazon. British firms capture relatively little of the value those services generate. Autonomous vehicles could follow the same pattern.
