Lyft is preparing to launch autonomous vehicle trials on London’s streets within weeks, using robotaxis supplied by Chinese technology giant Baidu.
The first batch of Baidu’s Apollo Go vehicles have already arrived in the capital and are currently undergoing certification before being deployed with safety operators behind the wheel.
“The vehicles are here,” said Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s executive vice president of global growth. “Once that process is done, which should be in the next couple of weeks, they will be out on the road.”
A commercial rollout is expected to follow once the UK’s new automated vehicle framework is fully implemented and all necessary regulatory approvals are secured.
Lyft argues the arrival of self-driving vehicles will create a “hybrid network” alongside human drivers rather than pushing them off the road entirely.
“It doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game,” Bird told City AM. “There will be autonomous vehicles and there will be human-driven vehicles.”
London is emerging as Europe’s most closely watched proving ground for autonomous vehicles, with several major players now targeting the capital.
British startup Wayve is preparing autonomous trials with Uber, while Google’s Waymo is also targeting a launch in the city.
Bird believes London has become attractive for many of the same reasons that helped autonomous vehicles gain traction in cities like Phoenix and San Francisco, citing openness to innovation as a key factor.
“The technology is getting there,” he said. “And the city is open to innovation.”
For Lyft, autonomous vehicles represent only one strand of a much broader strategy to dominate London’s transport market through a series of significant acquisitions.
The company spent the past year rapidly expanding across Europe, with its £140m acquisition of Freenow giving it access to nine European markets.
Its subsequent purchase of Gett’s UK business further strengthened Lyft’s position within London’s black cab booking network.
Combined, the deals place Lyft across much of the capital’s transport ecosystem, spanning black cabs, private hire vehicles, chauffeur services, and Santander Cycles infrastructure.
Within the next year, the company plans to bring all those services together under a single global platform, giving users access to the full range of transport options in one place.
“You can get a taxi, you can get a bike, you’ll be able to get a chauffeur,” Bird said. “Ultimately we want to be a place where you can get anywhere you want to go.”
Lyft is keen to stress that London’s iconic black cab remains central to its vision, with Bird describing it as “critical to the London ecosystem.”
“It’s iconic worldwide,” he said, signalling a deliberate effort to distinguish Lyft from rivals that have historically clashed with drivers and regulators.
“We don’t come into a community or city and demand, we want to come in and earn our right,” Bird added.
The company points to Phoenix, Arizona, one of the world’s most mature autonomous vehicle markets, as evidence that robotaxis expand demand rather than cannibalise existing services.
“When supply grows, the pie grows. The ETAs go down, reliability improves and more people use the service,” Bird said.
Questions over safety and the long-term future of professional drivers continue to dominate discussions around autonomous vehicles on both sides of the Atlantic.
Bird accepts that robotaxis will face greater scrutiny than human drivers for some time, but believes public attitudes will shift as familiarity grows, echoing what happened in California.
“By the fifth or tenth ride, you don’t really notice it anymore,” he said.