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 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.

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,