China’s Baidu says it’s running 250,000 robotaxi rides a week — same as Alphabet’s Waymo
Chinese technology company Baidu announced Monday that it may sell some robotaxi rides without human personnel on board.
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BEIJING – Ace baidu The company, which is ramping up robotaxi operations around the world, surpassed 250,000 orders of fully driverless weekly rides as of Oct. 31, according to a spokesperson for the company’s self-driving vehicle unit, Apollo Go.
This is the same report Waymo reported for weekly paid US rides in late April. Waymo had no new figures to share when contacted by CNBC. The alphabet-powered robotaxi operator operates primarily in San Francisco and Los Angeles in California and Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo is partnering with Uber in Austin and Atlanta.
The increase in Baidu’s robotaxi capabilities comes at a time when Chinese and US companies are competing for leadership in advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, electric cars and autonomous driving.
It’s unclear how long Apollo Go has been making 250,000 trips a week. In the quarter ending June 30, the company averaged 169,000 trips per week, according to CNBC calculations. 2.2 million fully driverless Robotaxi rides for the period have been announced.
Baidu’s Apollo Go operates robotaxis primarily in Wuhan and parts of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in mainland China. The company is also expanding into Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and most recently Switzerland. Robotaxis often has to go through public testing phases before local regulators allow the companies to charge fees.
Apollo Go said it has received 17 million robotaxi ride orders to date and its vehicles have traveled 240 million kilometers (149 million miles) with 140 million fully driverless rides.
Regarding safety, Apollo Go announced that an airbag deploys on average every 10.1 million kilometers, but so far there have been no major accidents resulting in injury or death.
Baidu is scheduled to release its next version Quarterly results as of November 18 Before the US market opened. The company is preparing to continue its operations Annual technology conference in Beijing on November 13.
Weekly robotaxi figures from Chinese competitors pony.ai And WeRide was not immediately available. Waymo did not immediately respond to a request to update the figures, which were shared in April.
