Baidu's Apollo Go plans to launch taxis with no steering wheels in Switzerland as the race for robotaxis in Europe heats up

BEIJING — Chinese tech elephantine Baidu announced Wednesday that its robotaxi portion volition commencement trial drives successful Switzerland successful December, arsenic firms contention to get their vehicles connected European roads.

The company's Apollo Go portion volition enactment with Swiss nationalist transit relation PostBus done a strategical partnership, Baidu said.

By the archetypal 4th of 2027, the companies purpose to statesman operating a public-facing afloat driverless taxi work called "AmiGo" that uses Apollo Go's RT6 electrical vehicles, the property merchandise said. Baidu added that erstwhile the robotaxis are up and running, the operators program to region the cars' steering wheels.

Plans to commencement tests successful December are the astir factual steps Baidu has announced truthful acold successful getting its robotaxis connected nationalist roads successful Europe.

The Chinese tech institution said successful August that it would spouse with U.S. ride-hailing institution Lyft to deploy robotaxis successful the U.K. and Germany starting successful 2026. A period earlier, Baidu announced a concern with Uber to deploy Apollo Go robotaxis connected the ride-hailing level extracurricular the U.S. and mainland China aboriginal successful the year.

Other robotaxi companies are besides racing to grow into Europe and the Middle East, aft gathering up operations successful the U.S. and China.

On Friday, Chinese robotaxi relation Pony.ai announced it volition enactment with Stellantis to begin tests successful Luxembourg successful the coming months, earlier expanding to different European cities adjacent year.

U.S. rival Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, past week besides announced plans to start tests successful London before launching the self-driving taxi work determination adjacent year. Uber successful June said it would commencement trials successful outpouring 2026 of afloat autonomous rides successful the U.K. with SoftBank-backed self-driving tech startup Wayve.

— CNBC's Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.