Amigo, the on-demand autonomous mobility service developed by Baidu’s Apollo Go in partnership with Swiss Post’s PostBus, has received a special operating permit from Switzerland’s Federal Roads Office for Level 4 autonomous operations in Eastern Switzerland. Open-road trials with a safety operator on board began on June 1, covering an approximately 80 km² service area across the cantons of St. Gallen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, and Appenzell Innerrhoden.

The permit confirms that Amigo’s vehicles and autonomous driving system meet Switzerland’s safety and quality requirements. A closed-group user trial will follow the current testing phase, with fully driverless operations — without safety operators — subject to the completion of outstanding safety evidence. Regular commercial operations are targeted for early 2027, which Apollo Go describes as the largest planned automated public transport operation of its kind in Europe.

The service uses Apollo Go’s RT6 vehicles, each of which is fully electric, carries up to three passengers, and is equipped with more than 30 sensors for environmental perception and real-time data processing. The steering wheel is designed to be removed once the service transitions to fully driverless operations. Rides will be bookable via the Amigo app.

Apollo Go delivered 3.2 million fully driverless rides in the first quarter of 2026, with weekly rides peaking at more than 350,000 in March — a 120% year-on-year increase. Cumulative public rides exceeded 22 million as of April 2026, with the platform’s fleets accumulating more than 330 million autonomous kilometres, of which over 220 million were fully driverless.

“Receiving FEDRO’s special permit is an important milestone for Amigo and a strong validation of our technology,” said Nan Yang, vice-president of Baidu and general manager of the overseas business unit for its intelligent driving group. PostBus chief executive Stefan Regli said the permit demonstrated that operations could be implemented “step by step and under clearly defined safety requirements,” with the service designed to complement rather than replace existing public transport.

Why this matters:

•The PostBus partnership gives Apollo Go something most Chinese AV expansions lack: public transport legitimacy.Swiss Post is not a commercial ride-hailing operator looking for a technology vendor; rather, it is a federal public service institution with an established obligation to provide transport in areas where conventional services are limited. That institutional framing positions AmiGo as infrastructure rather than a commercial product, which is a meaningfully different regulatory and public perception context than the robotaxi deployments Pony.ai, WeRide and others are pursuing elsewhere in Europe.

•An 80km² service area across three cantons is substantive by European AV standards.Most European autonomous driving permits have been granted for tightly defined routes or single-location pilots. The Eastern Switzerland service area—spanning St. Gallen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Appenzell Innerrhoden—represents a geographically diffuse, semi-rural operating environment that is considerably more demanding than a city-centre loop or airport shuttle. Successfully validating SAE Level 4 performance across that terrain would carry more evidential weight with other European regulators than an equivalent urban pilot would.

•Apollo Go’s operational scale deserves to be read alongside its European ambitions.3.2 million fully driverless rides in Q1 2026, 22 million cumulative public rides and 220 million fully driverless kilometres place Apollo Go in a different operational league from most of the AV developers currently entering Europe. The technology maturity question that hangs over European AV deployments generally is less acute for a platform accumulating 350,000 rides per week at peak in its home market; the challenge for Baidu is regulatory and geopolitical acceptance, not whether the system works.