China’s Baidu to test robotaxis in Switzerland in race for Europe

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

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

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

Plans to start tests in December are the most concrete steps Baidu has announced so far in getting its robotaxis on public roads in Europe.

The Chinese tech company said in August that it would partner with U.S. ride-hailing company Lyft to deploy robotaxis in the U.K. and Germany starting in 2026. A month earlier, Baidu announced a partnership with Uber to deploy Apollo Go robotaxis on the ride-hailing platform outside the U.S. and mainland China later in the year.

Other robotaxi companies are also racing to expand into Europe and the Middle East, after building up operations in the U.S. and China.

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

U.S. rival Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, last week also announced plans to start tests in London before launching the self-driving taxi service there next year. Uber in June said it would start trials in spring 2026 of fully autonomous rides in the U.K. with SoftBank-backed self-driving tech startup Wayve.

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.