Chinese technology company Baidu announced on Monday that it could sell some driverless taxis.
Baidu
BEIJING – Chinese technology companies Baidu The report said that the growth rate of its Apollo Go robot taxi business has slowed down compared with previous quarters.
According to CNBC calculations, data released by Baidu on Thursday showed that the number of publicly operated robotaxis trips increased by 26% year-on-year in the first half of this year, with the average number of trips per month reaching 287,500.
This is a significant decrease from the 184% year-over-year growth rate of 229,000 average monthly rides in the first half of 2023.
Some cars still require a safety driver and are not fully autonomous.
Baidu is one of the main operators of public-facing robo-taxi rides in China, and regulators in parts of Beijing and cities such as Wuhan, where Apollo Go operates the largest, have allowed the companies to charge fees.
Baidu said on Thursday that as of July 28, Apollo Go had been operated a total of 7 million times. As of April 19, the number was 6 million.
In nearly all areas of Wuhan, Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis now operate fully autonomously with no safety personnel on board, Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li said on an earnings call Thursday, according to FactSet records.
“This has a significant cost impact,” he said.
A surge in interest in Wuhan’s robotaxis in early July coincided with a rapid increase in the number of people turning to ride-hailing jobs, raising concerns about the impact of automation on employment.
Apollo Go only accounts for about 1% of Wuhan’s ride-hailing market, Li said. “Scaling up will be a gradual process that may take many years.”
He described the local fleet as consisting of about 400 robotaxis but did not reiterate long-term goals.
Baidu previously said it has more than 500 robotaxis operating in Wuhan and plans to increase that to 1,000 by the end of the year.
Only a small portion of ride-hailing
As of July 28, the company operated about 336,000 Apollo Go rides in China last month, CNBC calculations show. This is approximately 23% higher than the monthly average in the third quarter of 2023.
Despite growing by more than 20%, robo-taxi is still growing faster than ride-hailing, but on a much smaller scale.
Didi Chuxing said earlier this week that China’s total transaction volume increased 8.7% year-on-year in the three months ended June 30.
“Even with these milestones, our share of the overall ride-hailing market is still very small,” Baidu’s Li said. “It will be many years before we gain meaningful market share in China or elsewhere.”
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