Verne, the Zagreb startup backed by Mate Rimac, has launched the continent’s first commercial self-driving ride service. The dream of joining the United States and China is European. But don’t be mistaken: the underlying tech is Chinese.
Since last April, citizens of Zagreb have had an interesting option for their morning commute. The Croatian autonomous mobility startup Verne, backed by Rimac Group founder Mate Rimac, has launched what it describes—accurately—as Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service.
You pay a flat fare of €1.99 per ride (!), and you summon a self-driving car to your door. What’s less science fiction: a trained operator sits inside during this early phase, hands off the wheel, and watches. But the machine is driving.
Chinese knowhow
The key districts of the Croatian capital are not served by Rimacs, but by 10 electric Arcfox Alpha T5 vehicles manufactured by the Chinese carmaker BAIC.
Their navigation is handled by compatriot’s Pony.ai’s seventh-generation autonomous driving system. This is the same Chinese company already running hundreds of robotaxis across Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Rides can be booked through the Verne app and, soon, through Uber, which has taken a strategic stake in a partnership that also involves Pony.ai. “We said we would launch in Zagreb in 2026,” said Marko Pejković, Verne’s co-founder and CEO. “Today, we did. This is just the start.”
Nonetheless, the first European robotaxi is a Chinese spin-off. It raises security concerns, as this is the most advanced region in automated driving, but Chinese brains and eyes in tech guise always unsettle European officials.
Verne has strong ambitions, though. It has been in permitting discussions with 11 cities across the EU, the UK, and the Middle East, with more than 30 additional cities under active consideration. The UK and Germany are explicitly next on the list. As Pejković said, Zagreb is only the beginning.
A continent waking up
Now that we have our eyes on the rest of Europe, 2026 is shaping up to be the year the robotaxi stops being a promise and becomes a product. In London, Google’s Waymo has been mapping and testing across select boroughs since April.
It targets a commercial launch by September, pending regulatory sign-off. A separate partnership between Uber and British AI startup Wayve is also conducting autonomous trials in the city.
In Munich, Uber and Momenta, another Chinese autonomous-driving platform, are testing Level 4 vehicles on public streets with a view to commercial deployment this year. Berlin is where you can hop into an autonomous driving ID. Buzz taxis from Volkswagen’s mobility subsidiary MOIA. It’s the first self-driving public transit experiment at this scale on German soil. But still an experiment, not a signed-off commercial business.
And—quietly, without fanfare—there’s Leuven, where Chinese company WeRide has been running its Robobus. It holds Belgium’s first-ever federal Level 4 autonomous permit, in partnership with regional operator De Lijn. But what sets it apart is that it follows a designated loop, whereas Verne connects A to B within the heart of a European capital.
Real risk
Boston Consulting Group forecasts that by 203,0 roughly 120,000 robotaxis could be operating across European cities. Yes, the race is on, but the uncomfortable reality is that the autonomous driving stacks powering nearly every service launching in Europe are currently Chinese.
Except for Wayve, a Cambridge-founded AI company with genuine European roots, and MO, IA, which uses software technology from Mobileye, an Israeli startup with advanced solutions for Level 4 ADAS systems.
In any case, according to insiders venturing into robotaxis, the EU is presently paying zero attention to the technological inheritance upon which these robotaxis are built. It could pose a real risk.
