Chinese tech giant Baidu has started testing autonomous vehicles on London’s roads, in partnership with Freenow by Lyft — and it’s another sign that the capital’s driverless future is edging closer to reality.
The testing began this week in the London Borough of Brent, using Baidu’s sixth-generation Apollo Go RT6 robotaxi, a purpose-built vehicle designed specifically for ride-hailing rather than adapted from an existing car. For now, every vehicle has a trained safety operator on board while it learns the mixed urban and suburban routes across the borough.
The trial builds on a strategic partnership Baidu and Lyft struck back in 2025 to roll out the RT6 across key European markets. Once testing wraps up, the vehicles are expected to become available to the public through the Freenow app — the taxi and multi-mobility platform Lyft bought from BMW and Mercedes-Benz for around €175 million (roughly $197 million) in a deal that closed last year. Public rides aren’t expected to start until 2027, and only then if regulators give the green light.
Freenow by Lyft’s UK boss struck a conciliatory note on what this means for the trade, saying the priority is ensuring autonomous technology supports rather than sidelines the professional drivers who already keep London moving — though how that plays out in practice remains to be seen.
London is fast becoming one of the most contested robotaxi battlegrounds in Europe. Waymo has already been running its own supervised trials in the city since the spring, and with Baidu now added to the mix, drivers can expect the pace of these announcements to keep picking up over the next year. Whether “supervised testing” quietly becomes “commercial service” faster than expected is the question every professional driver in the capital will be watching closely.
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