China’s Baidu says it’s running 250,000 robotaxi rides a week — same as Alphabet’s Waymo

BEIJING — As Baidu ramps up its robotaxi operations worldwide, totally driverless weekly rides as of Oct. 31 have now surpassed 250,000 orders, in keeping with a spokesperson for the corporate’s driverless automobile unit Apollo Go.

That is on par with what Waymo reported in late April for its weekly paid U.S. rides. When contacted by CNBC, Waymo didn’t have a brand new particular determine to share. The Alphabet-backed robotaxi operator primarily operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles in California and Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo companions with Uber in Austin and Atlanta.

The ramp up in Baidu’s robotaxi capabilities comes as Chinese language and U.S. corporations have been competing for leadership in superior expertise, together with synthetic intelligence, electrical automobiles and autonomous driving.

It was not clear for the way lengthy Apollo Go has been working 250,000 rides per week. For the quarter ended June 30, the corporate averaged about 169,000 rides per week primarily based on CNBC calculations of the 2.2 million fully driverless robotaxi rides disclosed for the interval.

Baidu’s Apollo Go primarily operates robotaxis in Wuhan and elements of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in mainland China. The corporate can also be increasing to Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and, most just lately, Switzerland. Robotaxis usually should endure phases of public testing earlier than native regulators enable corporations to cost fares.

Apollo Go mentioned it has acquired 17 million robotaxi experience orders so far, and that its automobiles have pushed 240 million kilometers (149 million miles), with 140 million totally driverless rides.

On security, Apollo Go disclosed on common there was one airbag deployment incident for each 10.1 million kilometers pushed, however thus far there’s has not been any main accident involving human damage or demise.

Baidu is scheduled to subsequent launch its quarterly results on Nov. 18 earlier than U.S. market open. The corporate is about to carry its annual tech conference in Beijing on Nov. 13.

Weekly robotaxi figures from Chinese language rivals Pony.ai and WeRide weren’t instantly obtainable. Waymo didn’t instantly reply to a request for an replace to the figures shared in April.