Baidu is rolling out trials of its Apollo Go robotaxis in Switzerland, with further tests planned in the UK and Germany next year, as the Chinese tech giant looks to take on its US peer Waymo in Europe.

Apollo Go has expanded its global reach after trialing robotaxis in Dubai in March, but this will be the first time its vehicles are on European roads.

The test runs in Switzerland, in partnership with PostBus, will use a pilot fleet for mapping trips without passengers and with safety drivers on board.

The company hopes to open its doors to a “select group of users” in the first half of 2026, still with a safety driver onboard, before driverless trials kick off later in the year. It expects to be fully operational in the first quarter of 2027.

The trials come after Baidu announced an agreement in August with ride-hailing platform Lyft to supply self-driving cars in Germany and the UK next year. The European fleet is expected to grow to thousands of vehicles in the following years.

“We are working closely with all relevant stakeholders, including our local partners in the UK and Germany, to advance our plans for market entry and ensure full compliance with local safety and regulatory requirements,” Zhang Liang, managing director of Europe, the Middle East and Asia at Baidu Apollo, told Nikkei Asia, although he declined to reveal the timeline.

In October, a few months after Baidu’s announcement, US rival Waymo—backed by Google parent Alphabet—also said it would trial robotaxis in London next year with a “small fleet of vehicles,” and will look to grow over time.

“We intend to welcome our first public riders next year, contingent on government approvals, and look forward to expanding to more cities around the world in the future,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

This makes the British capital the first city where US and Chinese robotaxis will be battling it out. The two giants will also face competition from domestic company Wayve, which is planning to launch pilot trips in London from the spring in partnership with Uber.

Robotaxis have been much slower to take off in Europe than in either the US or China, but BloombergNEF forecasts that there could be as many as 17,000 across Europe by 2030, mostly in the UK and Germany, which are each seen to have over 6,000.

The European market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 72.7% to reach USD 8.6 billion by the end of the decade, according to Grand View Research.

But analysts note that historic European cities could pose a novel set of challenges for Apollo Go and Waymo.

“Street patterns, narrower roads, and, in the case of the UK, driving on the other side of the road to most of the robotaxi development are all challenges for robotaxi developers, but they are not insurmountable,” said Andrew Grant, head of intelligent mobility at BloombergNEF, which provides research about clean energy and technologies.

Baidu Apollo’s Zhang said he was confident that Apollo Go’s experience around the world would enable it to adjust to the specific characteristics of European cities.

“In particular, our expanding test operations in Hong Kong, one of the world’s most complex right-hand drive cities, will provide valuable real-world experience that supports a smoother entry into the UK market,” he said.

Waymo also said London’s winding streets would not pose too much of a problem to its technology. “We are confident in our technology’s ability to generalize to new environments like London,” the company’s spokesperson said.

Robotaxis could face greater competition from public transport in Europe, where many countries have prioritized the development of robobuses over driverless taxis, encouraging some companies to adjust their focus.

WeRide, another Chinese autonomous vehicle developer, launched new robobus trials in Belgium in September, building off successful runs in France, Spain, and Switzerland.

“Robobuses face lower technical barriers and fit more easily into European transit, especially in dense urban corridors and short ‘last-mile’ routes connecting transit hubs to final destinations,” analysts at S&P said in a recent report.

The looming European competition between Apollo Go and Waymo marks another front in the struggle for technological supremacy between the US and China.

Last month, Apollo Go revealed that the average number of weekly riders surpassed 250,000 in October, a milestone Waymo reached in April.

Waymo has the most fully operational robotaxi services globally, said BloombergNEF’s Grant, but all of them are in the US “2026 could be when we see fully operational robotaxi services outside the US and China,” he said.

This article first appeared on Nikkei Asia. It has been republished here as part of 36Kr’s ongoing partnership with Nikkei.