Today we are thrilled to announce that Yandex.Taxi’s self-driving car is now offering a ride-hailing service to passengers in the university city of Innopolis, Russia.  As the first service to offer autonomous ride-hailing in Europe, we are not only excited to help users safely and efficiently navigate to destinations but also to help the public adopt driverless technology and the future of transportation. 

Residents can order rides to multiple set destinations such as the university, the stadium, residential blocks, and the local business center.  Currently, approximately 100 passengers have agreed to participate in the testing of our driverless ride-hailing service and received a link to order rides through a Telegram chatbot.

The young city, centered around the tech-focused Innopolis University, offers Yandex a great urban environment to take the next significant step in publicly testing our self-driving cars that combines our expertise operating on busy public streets and our experience offering passenger rides on test tracks.  

In Innopolis, Yandex will first operate two self-driving vehicles to specific destinations within the city free of charge and keep a safety engineer in the passenger seat.  Our Yandex self-driving team plans to later expand the autonomous ride-hailing service to include more destinations, additional vehicles, and removing the safety driver in addition to improving the service based on user feedback.