Baidu's Apollo Go launches on Uber in Dubai

Lucid Group and the European shared mobility platform Bolt announced a strategic partnership on September 17 to develop and deploy autonomous mobility services across Europe, sending Lucid shares up nearly 6% on the day. The tie-up combines Lucid's software-defined vehicle platform with Bolt's European data, operating infrastructure and mobility expertise, with services to run on vehicles built on Lucid's upcoming Midsize platform. Bolt plans to deploy at least 25,000 fully autonomous vehicles across multiple European cities and countries, supporting its goal of 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035, though financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed. The deal lands as Lucid remains under significant financial pressure: in its Q2 2026 results, production rose 24% from a year earlier, deliveries climbed 19% and revenue jumped 56%, but the quarter carried an adjusted net loss of $2.78 per share against a Wall Street consensus estimate of $2.41 per share, and cash burn reached $1.47 billion, up from just over $1.01 billion a year earlier. Management said it has identified $1.4 billion in cash flow improvements for 2026 across operating costs, capital spending and working capital, while short interest stood at 45.81% of the float as of August 31 and the 12 analysts covering the stock split 25% Buy, 50% Hold and 25% Sell, with a median 12-month price target of $7 implying more than 60% upside.

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle development company under Alphabet, announced on September 18 that it plans to launch a full driverless electric vehicle ride-hailing service in Singapore by 2028, marking its first entry into the Southeast Asian market. The first batch of driverless electric vehicles to be deployed will be the Jaguar I-PACE, which will be shipped to Singapore in the coming months. Under the plan for 2027, trained vehicle operators will begin human-supervised test drives to train and tune the Waymo Driver system to familiarise it with Singapore's road characteristics and monsoon weather, before officially opening the service to the general public in 2028. Waymo is working closely with Singapore's Ministry of Transport and the Land Transport Authority, or LTA. Singapore's Minister for Transport Jeffrey Siow said Singapore welcomes Waymo's entry as the latest autonomous vehicle service provider. The move comes after Waymo earlier this week announced plans to launch Japan's first full commercial driverless taxi service in Tokyo by 2027. Waymo is currently valued at 126 billion US dollars as of last February, after raising 16 billion dollars, and continues to expand its fleet of driverless taxis amid fierce competition in the autonomous driving market with major rivals such as Amazon's Zoox and Tesla.