Uber and Lyft plan to bring robotaxis to London in partnerships with China's Baidu

Uber and Lyft program to bring robotaxi services to London adjacent twelvemonth done partnerships with Chinese tech elephantine Baidu

LONDON -- Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft program to bring robotaxi services to London adjacent twelvemonth successful abstracted partnerships with Chinese tech elephantine Baidu, the companies said Monday.

Uber said it's teaming up with Baidu's Apollo Go autonomous conveyance work to instrumentality portion successful a aviator programme for self-driving taxi services that the British authorities is readying for adjacent year.

Testing is expected to commencement successful the archetypal fractional of 2026, the 2 companies said successful societal media posts.

Lyft is besides partnering with Baidu for the robotaxi trials utilizing Apollo Go RT6 vehicles that are "purpose-built for rideshare," CEO David Risher said successful a station connected X.

“We expect to commencement investigating our archetypal fleet with dozens of vehicles adjacent twelvemonth - pending regulatory approval," Risher said. The institution "plans to standard to hundreds from there,” helium added.

Britain is emerging arsenic a frontline for the planetary rollout of self-driving taxi services aft the authorities decided implicit the summertime to velocity up its aviator programme by moving the commencement day up by a year.

Baidu is racing against rivals including Waymo, owned by Google genitor Alphabet, which said successful October it plans to instrumentality portion successful the U.K. trials arsenic portion of its planetary expansion.

Wayve, a U.K. homegrown startup that's processing its ain artificial quality exertion for self-driving cars, has besides teamed up with Uber to bring robotaxi work to the British capital.

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