Lyft has only recently entered the European market with its acquisition of Freenow, announced in April. US markets including Phoenix, Austin and San Francisco already have robotaxi services from companies including Waymo and Tesla. Uber recently announced a global plan to deploy robotaxis with Lucid and Nuro starting next year.

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.

The companies want to launch the robotaxi services in Germany and the U.K. first, pending regulatory approval.