July 29, 2026 – Chinese autonomous driving firm Momenta has secured a landmark nationwide L4 urban road testing permit from Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), marking the first time a Chinese enterprise has obtained full-country L4 testing authorization across Germany’s city networks.
Unlike the previous fragmented city-by-city approval process that slowed testing rollouts for most players in the German market, Momenta’s new KBA license allows the company to launch L4 trials directly on all urban roads nationwide, with safety validation protocols fully aligned to EU regulatory frameworks that drastically boost testing efficiency. Widely recognized as one of the world’s most stringent traffic safety regulators, KBA’s formal approval confirms that Momenta’s technical maturity and system safety have passed Europe’s most rigorous evaluation benchmarks.
Momenta has cultivated its presence in the German market for years, building long-standing deep partnerships with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and the Volkswagen Group. At last September’s Munich IAA Mobility show, the company and global mobility platform Uber jointly announced Munich as the global launch city for their shared Robotaxi initiative, with commercial operations scheduled to kick off this year, letting local residents hail Momenta’s autonomous vehicles directly through the Uber app.
“Germany stands as the global benchmark for autonomous driving regulation,” commented Momenta CEO Cao Xudong. “True self-driving does not just perceive road conditions—it interprets them, anticipating the evolving dynamics and interaction logic of the physical world. That is exactly the core value of Momenta’s world model, where every kilometer of testing drives continuous AI feedback, iteration and evolution.”
Powered by a unified large-scale model that supports the scaled deployment of passenger vehicles, Robovan, Robotruck and Robotaxi fleets, Momenta has now advanced from single-city pilot operations to nationwide road testing in Germany—the heart of the global automotive industry, pushing the overseas expansion of Chinese autonomous driving solutions a major step forward. The permit also lays critical groundwork for the further expansion of Momenta and Uber’s European Robotaxi project, following Uber’s additional equity investment in Momenta during its recent Hong Kong IPO.
