Baidu Begins Apollo Go Robotaxi Tests in London

The companies say they plan to invite public riders in 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. They did not provide a fleet size, testing mileage, route map or a more specific passenger-launch date in the retrieved announcement.

That makes the current milestone a supervised road-testing program, not a commercial driverless service. Safety operators remain in the vehicles while the partners gather evidence about how the system behaves in London's road environment.

Baidu supplies the sixth-generation RT6 vehicles and autonomous-driving technology. Freenow, the mobility platform acquired by Lyft in 2025, contributes local operating experience and would place the vehicles within a network that also includes taxis and private-hire vehicles.

The program follows a Baidu-Lyft partnership announced in 2025 for European deployment. At that time, Associated Press reported that Lyft expected to begin London testing with dozens of vehicles and scale later, subject to approval. The newly retrieved July 28 announcement confirms that road testing has now begun, but it does not say that the earlier fleet target has been reached.

London is also hosting or preparing other autonomous-vehicle programs. That competitive context matters, but it does not establish equivalence between operators: testing scope, onboard supervision, operating domains and approval status can differ substantially.

For autonomous-vehicle teams, the useful evidence will come after the launch announcement: disclosed intervention rates, operating-domain boundaries, testing mileage, regulator decisions and the conditions attached to any passenger service. None of those measures was supplied for the Brent program in the retrieved sources.

The current verified event is therefore narrow but concrete. Apollo Go vehicles are conducting supervised road tests in Brent, and a 2027 public-rider target remains conditional on regulatory approval.