China’s Baidu to deploy robotaxis on rideshare app Lyft
By AFP
By AFP
August 4, 2025
China's tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years - Copyright AFP/File NOEL CELIS
Chinese internet giant Baidu plans to launch its robotaxis on rideshare app Lyft in Germany and Britain in 2026, pending regulatory approval, the two companies said on Monday.
Last month, Baidu announced a similar agreement with Uber in Asia and the Middle East as it seeks to take pole position in the competitive autonomous driving field both at home and abroad.
Lyft and Baidu said Monday that “in the following years” the fleet of Apollo Go driverless cars will be expanded to thousands of vehicles across Europe.
They did not specify which other countries the cars would be deployed in, and it was not clear how long it might take to gain regulatory approval for the initial deployment.
Driverless taxis are already on some roads with limited capacity in the United States and China, most notably in the central city of Wuhan, where a fleet of over 500 can be hailed by app in designated areas.
Their reach is spreading, with Shanghai’s financial district Pudong recently announcing a batch of permits for multiple companies to operate robotaxis.
China’s tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years, with intelligent driving the new battleground in the country’s cutthroat domestic car market.
Baidu is not alone among Chinese companies in searching to expand its foothold abroad.
Its rival WeRide is also active in the Gulf region, and in January announced it had been picked to lead a small pilot project in Switzerland.
Pony.AI, another Chinese company, said in May that it had signed a deal to launch its self-driving taxis on Uber in “a key market in the Middle East later this year”.
San Francisco-based Lyft in April said it had agreed to buy German taxi app Freenow, planting a flag in the European market.
The acquisition marked Lyft’s “most significant expansion outside North America”, the group said.
China's tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years - Copyright AFP/File NOEL CELIS
Chinese internet giant Baidu plans to launch its robotaxis on rideshare app Lyft in Germany and Britain in 2026, pending regulatory approval, the two companies said on Monday.
Last month, Baidu announced a similar agreement with Uber in Asia and the Middle East as it seeks to take pole position in the competitive autonomous driving field both at home and abroad.
Lyft and Baidu said Monday that “in the following years” the fleet of Apollo Go driverless cars will be expanded to thousands of vehicles across Europe.
They did not specify which other countries the cars would be deployed in, and it was not clear how long it might take to gain regulatory approval for the initial deployment.
Driverless taxis are already on some roads with limited capacity in the United States and China, most notably in the central city of Wuhan, where a fleet of over 500 can be hailed by app in designated areas.
Their reach is spreading, with Shanghai’s financial district Pudong recently announcing a batch of permits for multiple companies to operate robotaxis.
China’s tech companies and automakers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology in recent years, with intelligent driving the new battleground in the country’s cutthroat domestic car market.
Baidu is not alone among Chinese companies in searching to expand its foothold abroad.
Its rival WeRide is also active in the Gulf region, and in January announced it had been picked to lead a small pilot project in Switzerland.
Pony.AI, another Chinese company, said in May that it had signed a deal to launch its self-driving taxis on Uber in “a key market in the Middle East later this year”.
San Francisco-based Lyft in April said it had agreed to buy German taxi app Freenow, planting a flag in the European market.
The acquisition marked Lyft’s “most significant expansion outside North America”, the group said.
By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
August 3, 2025
In San Francisco, locals barely notice the steering wheels turning by themselves anymore, with Waymo's fleet of Jaguars also available in parts of Silicon Valley - Copyright AFP -
Self-driving cars may be the future but this future is not yet here. Various technical challenges exist in relation to navigation. Plus there is the thorny issue of crashes. On the subject of safety, which vehicles have the worst records?
A recent study by Davidoff Law Personal Injury Lawyers, and provided to Digital Journal, has identified the top ten car models most likely to crash in self-driving mode. The dataset includes incidents involving various vehicle manufacturers, models, and automation levels, with sales data incorporated to normalize crash counts for fair comparison.
The key metrics considered included total crashes, total units sold, and crashes per 10K vehicles sold, which provides a relative crash risk assessment. The analysis combines Automated Driving Systems (ADS) and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) data, cleans and standardizes vehicle and automation types, and merges sales figures.
The final ranking for car models most likely to crash in self-driving mode is based on crashes per 10,000 vehicles sold, while states with the highest crash rates are identified using total crash counts and geographic data, including city, time, and roadway surface conditions.
The outcome of the analysis indicates:
| Manufacturer | Number of Crashes | Type of System | Model | Sold cars | Crashes Per 10K Sold Cars |
| Jaguar | 918 | ADS | I-Pace | 131,860 | 69.6193 |
| Tesla | 2,708 | ADAS | Model Y, Model 3 | 2,362,466 | 11.4626 |
| JLR | 62 | ADS | I-Pace | 74,387 | 8.3348 |
| Rivian | 12 | ADAS | R1S | 116,345 | 1.0314 |
| Kenworth Motor Truck Co | 13 | ADS | T680 | 560,000 | 0.2321 |
| BMW | 63 | ADAS | iX xDrive50, X5 | 5,242,185 | 0.1202 |
| Subaru | 119 | ADAS | Forester | 10,249,838 | 0.1161 |
| ACURA | 35 | ADAS | MDX, TLX | 3,332,896 | 0.1050 |
| Mercedes-Benz | 39 | ADAS | S580 | 5,704,671 | 0.0684 |
| HONDA | 122 | ADAS | Civic | 23,757,953 | 0.0514 |
Tesla follows in second place with 11.46 crashes. With 2,708 reported incidents across its Model Y and Model 3 vehicles, Tesla has the highest absolute number of crashes in the study. However, its crash rate is six times lower than Jaguar’s, with nearly 18 times more vehicles on the road.
JLR secures the third position with 8.33 crashes. The I-Pace variant with ADS technology shows similar safety concerns, although it has fewer total incidents (62). This is eight times lower than Jaguar’s and three times lower than Tesla’s, while it uses the same technology as Jaguar. JLR also has the lowest sales volume in the top 10 with only 74,387 vehicles sold.
Rivian holds the fourth spot with 1.03 crashes. The R1S model represents a significant improvement in safety compared to the top three manufacturers, with a crash rate eight times lower than JLR’s and 11 times lower than Tesla’s.
Kenworth Motor Truck Company comes in fifth with 0.23 crashes. Despite using full ADS technology in its T680 truck model like Jaguar and JLR, Kenworth achieves a crash rate 36 times lower than JLR’s and 302 times lower than Jaguar’s.
BMW takes the sixth position with 0.12 crashes. The German manufacturer’s models perform twice as well as Kenworth’s, 86 times better than JLR’s, and 580 times better than Jaguar’s top-ranked I-Pace.
Subaru appears at seventh with 0.12 crashes. While matching BMW’s crash rate, Subaru’s Forester experiences nearly twice as many total incidents (119) as BMW (63). Subaru’s crash rate is slightly higher than Acura’s, while both use similar ADAS technology.
Acura places eighth with 0.11 crashes. The luxury division of Honda performs 57% better than Mercedes-Benz in crash rates, though Mercedes has a significantly larger fleet of vehicles.
Mercedes-Benz sits at ninth with 0.07 crashes. The S580 model demonstrates 40% better safety performance than Acura’s models and performs 71% better than BMW’s vehicles, despite all three being luxury brands with ADAS technology.
Honda rounds out the list at tenth with 0.05 crashes. With the largest sales in the study at nearly 23.8 million Civic models, Honda achieved the lowest crash rate among all manufacturers, 58% lower than BMW, despite having over four times as many vehicles on the road as Mercedes-Benz.
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