Chinese tech company Baidu announced on Monday that it can sell some robotaxis without human staff in the vehicles.
Baidu
Beijing — as Baidu The company is ramping up its robotaxi business around the world, with more than 250,000 weekly orders for completely driverless rides as of October 31, according to a spokesperson for the company’s self-driving car division, Apollo Go.
This is on par with the number of weekly paid rides Waymo reported in the U.S. in late April. When contacted by CNBC, Waymo did not have specific new numbers to share. The Alphabet-backed robotaxi operator primarily operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo partners with Uber in Austin and Atlanta.
Baidu’s robotaxis enhancements come as Chinese and American companies vie for leadership in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and autonomous driving.
It’s unclear how long Apollo Go will continue to make 250,000 weekly trips. The company averaged about 169,000 rides per week in the quarter that ended June 30, based on 2.2 million fully driverless robotaxi rides disclosed by CNBC over the same period.
Baidu’s ApolloGo operates robotaxis primarily in Wuhan and parts of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in mainland China. The company has expanded to Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and recently Switzerland. Robotaxis typically have to undergo gradual public testing before local regulators allow companies to charge fares.
Apollo Go said it has received 17 million orders for robotaxi rides and its vehicles have traveled 240 million kilometers (149 million miles), 140 million of which are fully driverless.
Regarding safety, Apollo Go revealed that on average there is one airbag deployment accident for every 10.1 million kilometers driven, but so far there have been no serious accidents involving personal injury or death.
Baidu is next scheduled to release its quarterly results on November 18, before the US market opens. The company will hold its annual technology conference in Beijing on November 13th.
Weekly robotaxis statistics from Chinese rivals pony eye and we ride It was not immediately available. Waymo did not immediately respond to a request to update the numbers shared in April.
