Baidu and Freenow show off London robotaxi, aiming for 2027 rides
· BehindLines newsroom
Freenow, a subsidiary of the US ride-hailing group Lyft, and Apollo Go, the self-driving taxi service of China's Baidu, presented the RT6 in London on Thursday, October 22. The RT6 is Baidu's sixth-generation autonomous vehicle. According to the Reuters report published by US News, the partners hope to start a driverless service in the British capital in 2027.
Testing started in the summer. Baidu's announcement says the cars have been driving since July 28 in the borough of Brent, in north-west London, on both city and suburban roads, with a safety operator inside. Apollo Go supplies the vehicles and the driving software, while Freenow runs local operations. Carrying members of the public still requires approval from the authorities. Talks are being held with Transport for London and the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, the government unit in charge of the matter.
Danny O'Gorman, who heads Freenow in the UK, told Reuters that London is a useful place to test because of its many speed humps, narrow streets and numerous roads capped at 20 miles per hour. He expects implementing rules soon and spoke of a fleet of a few dozen cars within one to two years. Investing.com notes that no precise launch date has been set.
The background: London is becoming a contested testing ground. Uber and the British firm Wayve started a robotaxi service there in September with a safety driver, and Waymo is aiming for a fully driverless service in the city by the end of this year. For Baidu, the UK builds on its work in Hong Kong, its first market where traffic drives on the left, which requires the software to be adapted.
What changes, and for whom: at first, the robotaxis would not take the place of the app's human drivers. Freenow says they will run alongside the licensed taxis and private hire cars already on its platform. For riders, the service would initially be limited to a few neighbourhoods. For officials, the question is how to oversee vehicles designed by a Chinese company inside an everyday transport service, at a time when safety and the handling of driving data are drawing growing attention in Europe.