Lyft will launch robot taxis in Germany next year

US tech company Lyft has announced that it will launch automated taxis in Germany in 2026. The cars will be manufactured by the Chinese tech company Baidu.

US tech platform to launch robot taxis in Germany

US tech company Lyft is set to launch automated taxis in Germany in 2026, the company has announced in a press release. 

“Initial deployments are planned for Germany and the United Kingdom in 2026, pending regulatory approval, with the fleet scaling to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the following years,” Lyft wrote. The regulatory approval needed concerns questions of safety, data protection and liability.

The vehicles, a mixture of minivans and SUVs, will be produced by the Chinese tech company Baidu. The Lyft launch will be the first time Baidu’s automated vehicles are used in Europe. 

Lyft’s robot taxis will be given access to the market via the ridesharing app Freenow. Initially launched in Hamburg in 2009, Freenow was bought by the San Francisco-based Lyft in July 2025.

Lyft claims launch will not leave taxi drivers jobless

Speaking to RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND), Lyft manager Donny Nordlicht claimed that his company’s business model would not put human taxi drivers out of work.

“The future of our industry is likely to be a hybrid one of autonomous taxis and the taxis we know, with drivers,” Nordlicht told RND. Nordlicht said the US company wanted to “build on” the public transport services offered in Europe.

In July, taxi drivers protested across dozens of German cities, demanding stricter regulations on car-hire services like Uber, Freenow and Bolt to limit unfair pricing competition. 

"We are demanding equality of arms: minimum prices for everyone, not just for us," Michael Oppermann of the German Taxi and Rental Car Association told the dpa.

So far, no German city has introduced a minimum pricing regulation for ride-sharing platforms, but Berlin has been considering the policy since January 2025.