Chinese Baidu will test robotaxis in Switzerland in the race for Europe

BEIJING — Chinese technology giant Baidu announced Wednesday that its robotaxi unit will begin test drives in Switzerland in December, as companies race to get their vehicles on European roads.

The company’s Apollo Go unit will work with Swiss public transport operator PostBus in a strategic partnership, Baidu said.

By the first quarter of 2027, the companies aim to begin operating a fully driverless public taxi service called “AmiGo” that uses Apollo Go’s RT6 electric vehicles, the press release said. Baidu added that once the robo-taxis are operational, operators plan to remove the steering wheels from the cars.

Plans to begin testing in December are the most concrete steps Baidu has announced so far to bring its robo-taxis to public roads in Europe.

The Chinese technology company announced in August that it would partner with an American ride-hailing company. Lyft deploy robotaxis in the UK and Germany from 2026. A month earlier, Baidu announced a partnership with Uber to deploy the Apollo Go robotaxis on the ride-hailing platform outside the US and mainland China later this year.

Other robot taxi companies are also working to expand into Europe and the Middle East, after expanding their operations in the United States and China.

On Friday, Chinese robotaxi operator Pony.ai announced that it would work with Stellantis to begin testing in Luxembourg in the coming months, before expanding to other European cities next year.

US rival Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, also announced plans last week to launch tests in London before launching the autonomous taxi service there next year. Uber announced in June that it would begin testing in spring 2026 of fully autonomous rides in the UK with SoftBank-backed autonomous tech startup Wayve.

—Arjun Kharpal of CNBC contributed to this report.