Welcome to the TechBrew Ride Home for Monday, August 4th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Robotaxies are coming to Europe. Apple wants answers, literally.

The AI researcher who turned down a billion and a half dollars, how the vibe seems to have definitively shifted in Silicon Valley,

and will rollable laptop screens become mainstream?

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

It's not just the U.S. and China, y'all.

Lyft has announced a partnership with Baidu to launch

autonomous vehicles in Germany and the UK in 26 pending regulatory approval, quoting Bloomberg.

Under the arrangement, Lyft will deploy the sixth generation of Baidu's robotaxies with the fleet

scaling to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the

following years, they added. The announcement follows Lyft's acquisition of Free Now, one of Europe's

largest taxi apps, marking its entry into nine new countries in the region. Last month, Uber

announced a similar deal with Baidu to have its driverless cars on the Uber app, but the initial

deployment later this year is planned for Asia and the Uber app, but the initial deployment later

this year is planned for Asia and the Middle East, not Europe. But the Lyft deal is not exclusive,

meaning it won't preclude Uber from rolling out Baidu robo taxis in the same markets in the future.

Lyft is working toward offering its first driverless rides in Atlanta later this year with

May Mobility. Separately,

it's planning U.S. deployments in 2026 with Intel-backed Mobile Eye Global and Bentler Group.

Meanwhile, Uber already offers driverless rides in Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta in partnership with

Alphabet Waymo, as well as in Abu Dhabi with Wii Ride.

For Baidu, which runs one of the largest fleets of robotaxies in China,

...