Baidu reports slower growth in robotaxi rides

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reports slower growth in robotaxi rides

******** tech company

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announced Monday it can sell some robotaxi rides without any human staff in the vehicles.

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BEIJING — ******** tech company

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is reporting slower growth in its Apollo Go robotaxi rides than in prior quarters.

Figures

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reported Thursday showed the number of robotaxi rides operated publicly grew by 26% year-on-year in the first half of the year to a monthly average of 287,500 rides, according to CNBC calculations.

That’s down sharply from year-on-year growth of 184% in the first half of 2023, for a monthly average of 229,000 rides.

Some of the cars still require a safety driver and are not fully autonomous.

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is one of the major operators of public-facing robotaxis in China, where regulators in parts of Beijing and cities such as Wuhan — Apollo Go’s largest operating region — have allowed the companies to collect fares.

Apollo Go has cumulatively operated 7 million rides as of July 28,

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said Thursday. That’s up from 6 million as of April 19. The company first crossed the 1 million mark two years ago in July 2022.

In nearly all parts of Wuhan,

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’s Apollo Go robotaxis now operate fully autonomously with no safety staff on board,

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CEO Robin Li said on an earnings call Thursday, according to a FactSet transcript.

“This has a significant impact on costs,” he said.

A surge of interest in the Wuhan robotaxis in early July coincided with a rapid rise in people turning to ride-hailing jobs, raising concerns about the impact of automation on employment.

Apollo Go only has around 1% share of the ride-hailing market in Wuhan, Li said. “Scaling will be a gradual process and could take many years.”

He described the local fleet as consisting of around 400 robotaxis, without reiterating longer-term goals.

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previously said it had more than 500 robotaxis operating in Wuhan, and planned to increase that to 1,000 by the end of the year.

A tiny fraction of ride-hailing

The company operated around 336,000 Apollo Go rides in China last month as of July 28, CNBC calculations showed. That’s about 23% above the monthly average in the third quarter of 2023.

With growth above 20%, the increase in robotaxi rides is still faster than that of ride-hailing, but at a far smaller scale.

Didi said earlier this week that ****** transaction value in China rose by 8.7% year-on-year in the three months ended June 30. However, its average daily transactions reached a record of 33 million.

“Even with these milestones, our share in the entire ride-hailing service market is very small,”

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’s Li said. “It will take many years for us to reach a meaningful market share in China or elsewhere.”

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#reports #slower #growth #robotaxi #rides

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