U.S. ride-hailing company Lyft said on Monday it will partner with China's Baidu to deploy robotaxis across Europe starting next year, marking the Chinese search engine giant's first foray into the European self-driven taxi sector.

Lyft partners with Baidu to bring Chinese driverless cars to Europe by 2026. Apollo Go robotaxis will deploy in Germany and UK first, scaling to thousands.

Lyft says that it will leverage its recent acquisition of taxi company Freenow to speed up deployment of autonomous vehicles, given that platform's established foothold in the UK and Germany. The partnership between Lyft and Baidu,