A UK thinktank is calling for per-mile charges on autonomous vehicles just as the global robotaxi fleet race intensifies, putting a number on a cost that operators have so far treated as someone else's problem: the displacement of hundreds of thousands of drivers and the congestion their empty vehicles create.
Why it matters
The robotaxi industry has spent the past year proving demand exists. Waymo reported 500,000 paid rides a week in March5. Tesla launched its robotaxi service last summer and earlier this month added purpose-built Cybercabs, vehicles with no steering wheel or pedals, to its fleet7. Zoox secured federal approval on July 30 and began charging for Las Vegas rides on August 10. Now a policy proposal from the Centre for British Progress quantifies what that expansion could cost the public: the report says England has 417,000 taxi and private hire drivers whose livelihoods are at risk, and that autonomous driving will eventually make much of their work obsolete3. Government projections indicate up to 40% of cars sold could have self-driving capability by the middle of the next decade1.
ANALYSIS The timing is deliberate. London's first robotaxis started operating only this month, with Uber partnering with Wayve for limited AV services in the capital. Google's Waymo and China's Baidu are vying to join them. Europe's first fully driverless taxi trials started in Zagreb, Croatia, this week. The thinktank is trying to set the fiscal framework before the fleet scales, not after.
The big picture
The Centre for British Progress proposes an AV charge calibrated to the social cost of congestion, roughly 88p per mile, which it calculates would raise £47 billion per year by 2050. The rationale rests on two projections: Department for Transport forecasts that highly automated driving will bring a 24% rise in road miles by 2050, and the observation that almost half of the mileage covered by Waymo's robotaxis in California occurs with no passenger on board. Fuel duty, currently bringing in about £27 billion a year, is projected to disappear with the transition to electric vehicles. ◆ An AV-specific charge would, in the thinktank's framing, replace a vanishing revenue stream while pricing in the externalities that empty-vehicle miles impose.
The industry's response was swift. Wayve's Sarah Gates said "a sector-specific tax at this early stage would undermine the government's growth agenda and send the wrong signal to innovators". Gates argued that AVs were "a major growth opportunity for the UK" that would bring "high-value jobs and corporation tax revenues from a share of a £700bn global market". The GMB union, which represents taxi and private hire drivers, said a tax would not go far enough; its representative Simon Rush said "driverless cars threaten the livelihoods of private hire drivers and the businesses that depend on them" and called for an AV charge that "could go some way to mitigating the economic disruption caused by the rollout of these vehicles". The GMB has asked the government, Transport for London, and operators for a plan to reskill and redeploy drivers, but said its questions have gone unanswered to date.
Between the lines
Waymo has nearly 4,000 vehicles in San Francisco4. Zoox has about 100 autonomous vehicles. ANALYSIS The UK debate exposes a tension running through every robotaxi market: operators need volume to prove unit economics, but volume is precisely what triggers the labor and congestion costs that invite regulation. In San Francisco, Zoox is spending on marketing, influencer campaigns, and festival sponsorships to build ridership against Waymo's incumbent presence. It has also offered free rides to restaurants and tourist stops. Zoox cannot yet charge for rides in California, still awaiting state and local authorization. Every free ride is an investment in future paid demand, but the commercial test, as The Rundown AI noted, is whether a first trip leads to a paid ride and then repeat bookings.
Investors are pricing in the optimism. Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, predicted the global autonomous taxi opportunity at "$8 trillion to $10 trillion". James Peng, described as the CEO of a large autonomous driving software business, said at Fortune's Leaders Forum on September 8 that "the technology problem is pretty much already solved" and predicted widespread global market penetration within five years. Yet McKinsey pushed back its robotaxi timeline last year, noting that "adoption timelines for autonomous vehicles have slipped by one to two years on average, relative to the 2023 survey". ◆ The gap between trillion-dollar forecasts and slipping adoption timelines is where policy proposals like the UK's find their opening: if scale is coming but not yet here, the window for fiscal architecture is now.
UK ministers have backed AVs as a "transformative opportunity," saying robotaxi services in London this year would bring "cutting-edge technology to British roads, creating thousands of jobs and unlocking billions for the economy by 2035". ◆ That framing sits uneasily beside the 121,000 taxi and private hire drivers in London alone whom the thinktank's report identifies as exposed.
What's next
Zoox's San Francisco campaign will test whether marketing spend can close the gap with Waymo's established ridership, while its Las Vegas service, which began charging on August 10, provides the first commercial revenue data for its purpose-built vehicle. In London, Waymo and Baidu are seeking entry alongside the Uber-Wayve partnership already operating. The Centre for British Progress report now sits with ministers who must reconcile their growth rhetoric with the fiscal and labor math the thinktank has laid out. Rivian's deal to supply Uber with up to 50,000 vehicles, agreed in March for $1.25 billion, adds another fleet-scale variable to the global picture.