Robotaxis are coming to London in 2026 after Uber, Lyft and Baidu team up

London is gearing up to welcome self-driving taxis next year, with another big-name partnership announced today set to give customers more choice.

Whether you love it or hate it, robot technology is changing the way we travel – from public transport like driverless trains and AI security cameras on stations to autonomous taxis making their way to the cramped streets of London.

Now, ride-hailing app firms Uber and Lyft have announced a partnership with Chinese tech giant Baidu to bring their electric robot taxis to the capital from next year.

Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, which operates in San Francisco, has already started testing autonomous taxis in London.

The companies are racing to secure a presence in London to be ready to offer rides to passengers when regulators give a green light to the new kind of taxis carrying people, which is expected to be in 2026.

Baidu’s fully electric RT6 model will be tested on London roads. The fleet has reportedly been designed and built from the outset to operate without a driver, while competitors’ fleets, like Waymo’s Jaguar I-Pace, are converted production.

Waymo’s self-driving vehicles started their London tests last week. They have a safety driver on board, but the aim is thought to be for them to be fully driverless.

However, experts have cautioned that fully driverless taxis – ones without a human safety driver on board or any live human monitoring from a distance – are at least 20 years from becoming a reality.

Saber Fallah, a professor of safe AI and autonomy at the University of Surrey, told Metro that the new taxis are likely to be required to have a safety driver inside because of London’s complex road layout, making them autonomous vehicles but not fully driverless.

‘I’m pretty sure they are not going to be fully driverless. The recommendation is going to include a safety driver in the car, so it is not fully driverless,’ he said, adding that the goal of self-driving taxis is to ‘make more profit for the company by not paying drivers and not having to share their profits with the drivers.’

The aim of the trials is for companies like Baidu to gather data from London as the cars have been developed for cities in China with several differences like driving on the right.

Prof Fallah said: ‘The most important thing they are looking for with the tests is data, not technology.’

When asked how safe the data – like faces – will be if overseas companies have access to it, he said he believes it will be fine as long as ‘the government approves it and they have comply with UK regulations in terms of privacy and data collection.’

‘It will be the responsibility of the government to make sure there is no risk to the data collection,’ he said.

Commenting on the road safety of self-driving vehicles in general, the prof said that as long as a human is involved ‘I don’t see any risk as long as the safety driver is occupied by something else.’

The Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: ‘Another vote of confidence in our plans for self-driving vehicles from global leader Lyft. We’re planning for self-driving cars to carry passengers for the first time from Spring, under our pilot scheme – harnessing this technology safely and responsibly to transform travel.’

Lyft’s CEO, David Risher, said: ‘It’s official: Lyft and Baidu are bringing AVs to London

‘Riders across the city will be the first in the region to experience Baidu’s Apollo Go vehicles. We expect to start testing our initial fleet with dozens of vehicles next year – pending regulatory approval – through the Lyft and Freenow ecosystem, with plans to scale to hundreds from there.’

Which European countries have robot taxis?

Robotaxi trials are also in the cards for cities in Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg, with Chinese firms offering robot car technology on the driver’s seat.

Switzerland’s public transport operator PostBus is also in cahoots with Baidu, with driverless trials due to begin this month across its three eastern cantons, including St Gallen.

Uber is thought to be pairing up with another Chinese tech firm, Momenta, to begin driverless taxi trials in Munich.

Meanwhile, the Chinese robotaxi firm Pony.ai said in October it is working with Stellantis to kick off its own tests in Luxembourg, one of the continent’s smallest countries.

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