Baidu's Apollo Go and Freenow, the European ride-hailing operator Lyft bought in 2025, began on-road autonomous testing in London on 28 July, announced under a coordinated embargo that lifted at 08:00 UTC. It makes London the first major Western market where a Chinese autonomous vehicle operator tests at scale.
The scope
Dozens of test vehicles are operating in the borough of Brent, in north-west London. A public launch is targeted for 2027, contingent on UK regulatory approval that has not yet taken effect. Lyft acquired Freenow for approximately $197 million in 2025, giving it an operating footprint across European cities that Baidu does not have and a local licence position Baidu could not easily obtain alone.
Who else is on those streets
Waymo has been testing in London since April 2026, and Uber is working with Wave. London is now the one city where the American, Chinese and British approaches to autonomy are being tested against the same weather, the same road furniture and the same regulator — which makes it a far cleaner comparison than Phoenix or Wuhan.
What 'robotaxis hit the streets' leaves out
The framing across coverage implies a driverless service has begun. Three things are true and none of them support that. Every vehicle has a human safety operator behind the wheel. No passengers are being carried and no fares are being charged. And the commercial launch depends on a UK regulatory framework that is not yet in force — 2027 is the earliest possible date, not a scheduled one. This is road testing, which is the stage before the stage before a service.
The part that is genuinely new
Not the technology — Apollo Go has run driverless in Chinese cities for years. What is new is jurisdictional. A Chinese AV stack collecting road data in a European capital, through a subsidiary of an American company, is a configuration that would have been politically implausible eighteen months ago in almost any other technology sector. Whether it stays plausible through 2027 is a regulatory question, not an engineering one.