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.

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