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London is now a live testing ground for Baidu's Apollo Go autonomous vehicles, which will be available through Freenow, the European mobility network Lyft acquired in 2025.
The arrangement gives Baidu a distribution channel in a major Western city and extends Lyft's Freenow platform into autonomous vehicle territory.
The tension is that entering a market and establishing one are different things, and London has proved willing to absorb multiple rounds of robotaxi ambition without delivering a lasting commercial result.
What the Lyft-Baidu arrangement does for Freenow Lyft's acquisition of Freenow in 2025 was a bet on owning European mobility infrastructure rather than licensing into it.
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