Following my Wayve Ford Mustang Mach-E robotaxi ride in London last month (with a safety driver), I had the pleasure of speaking to Dom Joly about it on Times Radio.
The Trigger Happy TV star was the first person I’ve heard pronounce the company’s name wavy (way-vee), but he was not the last.
At the Wayve and Uber party, at The Royal Horticultural Society in early September, several others, including Bhavini Makwana, also went wavy. Is it a London thing?
Wayve, wave, wavy
You say tomato, etc, and Wayve is far from the first brand to run into such issues. Lots of people here say Nike, rhyming with bike, rather than Ny-kee.
Clearly, once a name sticks, it can be hard to shift. Maybe they should just embrace it? Does wavy sound more friendly?
Another intriguing aspect of my conversation with Joly was the fact that, 10 years ago, he organised a stunt involving “Leon’s Driverless Taxis”, with the driver of a Skoda disguised as a car seat.
See it here on YouTube around halfway through (4:42 minutes in).
By coincidence, Skoda are currently spending big trying to persuade people to pronounce their name with a “Shhh”. Good luck with that!
Also, as we reported back in 2019, Ford used a remarkably similar “Human Car Seat” tactic to gauge real-world responses to apparently autonomous vehicles.
“Take a drive into the future”, it said, down the side of Leon’s ‘Driverless Taxi’ in Trigger Happy’s Xmas Special. 10 years on, Wayve robotaxis (with a safety driver) are available to the public in London via Uber.
