of robotaxi rides publicly operated increased by 26% year-on-year.
Now, according to CNBC calculations in the first half of this year, they have a monthly average of 287,500 rides. These numbers of rides are considerably lower than the growth from the first half of 2023 at 184%.
However, some of the Apollo Go robotaxi operated by Baidu are not fully autonomous because they still require a safety driver.
The Baidu company is one of the major operators with a business of public robotaxis in China. There, some regulators in Beijing and big cities like Wuhan authorized the companies to collect charges. The Wuhan region in China represents the largest region in the country, where Apollo Go is operating electric vehicles.
In an earnings call, the CEO of Baidu, Robin Li stated that, in most parts of Wuhan city, the electric vehicles Apollo Go, operated by Baidu are now allowed to operate the cars fully autonomously without a safety staff on board.
“This has a significant impact on costs,” he stated in the call.
Also this Thursday, Baidu declared that they operated about 7 million rides as of July 28. This means that they recorded a growth because on April 19 this year they were up to 6 million rides. And the EV company first recorded the 1 million mark in July 2022, about 2 years ago.
An interest in early July for the robotaxis in Wuhan city overlapped with the rapid growth of people who had oriented to jobs in the ride-hailing domain. These events were raising concerns about the impact that automation could have on employment.
In Wuhan city, Apollo Go is reporting only 1% of the share in the ride-hailing market and the CEO Robin Li stated that “Scaling will be a gradual process and could take many years.” He also stated that the local fleet is around 400 robotaxis and they plan to increase this number to 1,000 electric vehicles by the end of this year.
According to the CNBC calculations, they showed that last month, the Baidu company operated about 336,000 Apollo Go rides in China. That is 23% above the monthly average from the third quarter of 2023.
With this increase of 20%, the robotaxi rides are still growing faster than ride-hailing services, but at a smaller scale. The CEO of Baidu, Robin Li said “Even with these milestones, our share in the entire ride-hailing service market is very small,”
“It will take many years for us to reach a meaningful market share in China or elsewhere.”
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