When you mention to people that you’ve worked in the area of automated vehicles, the natural first question is “when can I ride in one?”*
In Australia, automated vehicle deployments remain at the trial stage on public roads. Compared to countries such as the US and China, Australia has hosted a very small number of highly limited trials. This is not where many (including me!) hoped we would be in 2026, but challenges remain in perfecting and scaling the technology, completing regulatory reforms and securing international investments. We have not yet seen the scale of deployments that are occurring overseas, particularly in the United States (US) and China. Both countries now have thousands of vehicles operating without safety drivers and carrying paying passengers on public roads. There is now a significant and widening gap between Australia and the leading countries in vehicle automation.
Waiting for Waymo…
Recent media reports suggest Waymo is considering Australia for future deployment, potentially as soon as this year, although nothing has been announced by the company. This would be a welcome step forward in Australia, with Waymo the clear international leader in the robo-taxi use case for automated vehicles.
The scale of Waymo in the US is significant. In 2025 the company conducted 15 million rides from more than 2,500 vehicles across six US cities. To December 2025, the company has reported that it has driven 170.7 million rider-only miles without a human driver (almost 275 million kilometres). Despite some recent incidents, including an outage in San Francisco as a result of a power blackout disrupting traffic lights, Waymo has a strong safety record, reporting a “90% reduction in serious injury crashes” by its own estimates (compared to human drivers and regardless of who was at fault). Waymo has gradually expanded its operations to more US cities. Expansion to Australia would be consistent with recent funding news – Waymo secured US$16 billion in a funding round valuing the company at US$126 billion. The funding explicitly targets further expansion to an additional 20 cities in 2026, including London and Tokyo.
Expanding to Australia, as a right-hand drive market, would align with moving into Japan and the UK, but would take time. Waymo would need to complete extensive mapping, update software to align with Australia’s road rules and complete on-road testing. Waymo has been accelerating its processes in deploying to new US cities, but a new country is a greater challenge. There is also the key issue of regulation – which I will cover further below.
Automated vehicles in China
Outside the US, the clear leader in this technology is China, but there is less information available publicly on the state of the industry. Reports suggest that there are now at least five companies operating 2,300 robotaxis across 30 Chinese cities. However, these are generally operating in limited areas of these cities as part of trial arrangements. China has the benefit of significant competition amongst its major technology companies, with leaders including Baidu Apollo, Pony.ai, and WeRide. Pony.ai has announced that it has reached profitability in its operations in some cities. Whilst Chinese companies will no doubt look at Australia as a market, some experts believe they are likely to focus on developing markets, such as emerging deployments in the Middle East.
Australia’s as a market for automated vehicles
Australia remains an international leader in automated vehicles for mining, has advanced automated vehicles in many of our ports and a growing use case for agriculture. Whilst these deployments are in more controlled environments than public roads, Australia does have emerging experience in managing and deploying these technologies.
Australia has a number of features which make it an attractive market for automated vehicle deployments:
- A strong rule of law
- A relatively wealthy, urbanised population
- High quality road infrastructure in our cities, particularly on our managed motorways.
- Largely consistent road rules across the country
- Generally friendly climatic conditions (our major cities don’t get snow!)
- A relatively strong record on road safety and compliance with speed limits and road rules (compared to jurisdictions such as the United States)
Despite this, Australia faces a number of challenges to attract automated vehicle companies:
- Our regulation is not yet in place for commercial deployments. This creates uncertainty for companies looking to come and invest.
- Outside of major cities, our road and telecommunications infrastructure can create additional challenges for deployment.
- We drive on a different side of the road! Whilst a manageable challenge, we are one of very few right-hand drive markets, which may move Australia down the priority list.
- Australia is a relatively small market, based on our population, compared to other countries.
- Our distance with from major automotive markets, with companies likely needing to bring in automotive technical expertise.
The challenge of new regulation
Critics have frequently highlighted regulation as a barrier to automated vehicle deployment. My view is that this was overstated in the past. The real barrier was the maturity of the technology – it is only recently that we have seen mature deployments of automated vehicles on public roads without safety drivers anywhere in the world. However, we are reaching the point where regulation may become the most significant barrier to deployment. Australia’s state and federal legislation currently supports trials of automated vehicles but not major commercial deployments.
Australian governments have completed significant policy work**, but are still to finalise and pass key legislation. Australia’s 2024–27 National Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Action Plan sets out key actions for Australia’s regulatory framework by 2027. At the most recent Infrastructure and Transport Ministers Meeting in November 2025, Ministers agreed to work toward “conditional
deployment of automated vehicles in select locations from 2027… with full national AV readiness as soon as practical thereafter, subject to each jurisdiction’s capabilities.”
The task is significant, including:
- new federal legislation setting out key responsibilities for automated driving system entities, including safety duties;
- updates to vehicle standards;
- the creation of a new federal in-service safety regulator for automated vehicles; and
- complementary changes to state and territory legislation, in particular to road rules and compulsory third-party insurance arrangements.
There is a chicken and egg problem here. Among many competing reform priorities, there is not a strong impetus to dedicate the time, resources and political capital to legislation for a technology that doesn’t yet exist in Australia. But companies won’t look to deploy without a regulatory framework in place that provides them certainty. Trial legislation can support limited deployments, but companies may choose to wait for a complete legislative framework, rather than dealing with uncertain exemption processes and risking the need to go through approval processes multiple times.
Do we really need automated vehicles in Australia?
Road crashes kill over 1,200 Australians every year on our roads, with many thousands more seriously injured – most people I speak to who don’t work in transport appear unaware of the scale of the carnage. Whilst there are economic arguments to be made about the productivity benefits of automated vehicles, for me the key issue is road safety. There are still debates about the true safety level of automated vehicles and comparison data will take time to evolve. But there is “growing evidence that AVs crash less often per mile than human drivers” even as their overall safety impact is still not certain.
Automated vehicles have 360-degree vision, always (in theory) comply with speed limits and road rules, never get tired or distracted and are never impaired by drugs or alcohol. Anecdotal evidence suggests automated vehicles may also have a broader traffic calming effect due to always driving withing speed limits.
Regulators and industry will need to manage additional risks (such as cybersecurity), but the potential road safety benefits of automated vehicles (along with their potential productivity benefits) should make supporting the introduction of this technology in Australia a priority for governments.
So, when will see automated vehicles on the road in Australia?
Given the potential interest from companies in the US and China in Australia as a market, my best prediction currently is that we would see initial deployments of robotaxis in one to two cities in Australia by the end of 2027. Small scale deployments of automated freight and delivery vehicles could also occur over this timeline.
There are risks and uncertainties to this timeline – a downturn in the global economy will hamper investment; a single major crash could bring down one of the major automated vehicle companies and slow the whole industry. And of course, the pace of regulatory reform could push out these timelines.
Road safety is about more than just automated vehicles; a program of actions is required to reduce our road toll. But with the right regulatory framework in place, automated vehicles can help to ensure fewer Australians are killed and seriously injured on our roads.
Australian governments, Australian industry and the public will need to decide: are the potential benefits of automated vehicles worth investing in? And do we want to bring forward these benefits or delay them?
*Note, this question particularly seems to be “when can I ride in a vehicle without a human driver?”, ie a vehicle operating at Level 4 of the SAE’s Levels of Driving Automation.
**Marcus Burke led the national automated vehicle policy reform team at the National Transport Commission between 2016 and 2021, including establishing the first Trial Guidelines in Australia. This article represents his personal views of the current state of the market and likely timelines.
This article was published on 12 February 2026, with minor updates for currency on 23 March 2026.