A security staff member meets at a self-driving robottaxi on October 13, 2020 in Beijing, China, days after Baidu begins test operations of its Apollo robotaxi.
Zhao Jing | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Beijing - Baidu Robotaxies could begin collecting fares in a part of Beijing from Thursday, the Chinese tech giant told CNBC this week, marking a major step toward building out its driverless taxi business.
Regulatory approval to support robotaxis in China comes as local governments in the US are moving in a similar direction.
However, this move by the city of Beijing carries an additional burden.
Approval from China’s capital For the first time such a large city in the country has allowed companies to charge the public for robotic taxi rides. It sets the stage for other cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Wei Dong, vice president and chief security operations officer of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group, told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
He expects those cities to be functional by the end of this year or early next year.
How much will it cost?
Effective Thursday, Baidu’s Apollo unit, which runs the robotaxi business, can collect fare from passengers taking one of 67 self-driving cars in Beijing’s suburban district of Yijuang.
Though the company did not reveal the exact pricing, it did say that the fare comparison will be available through the app like the premium level ride-hailing charges. Elder sister, which can cost twice as much as a normal ride.
Baidu has offered free robotic taxi rides in Yijuang since October 2020. As of Wednesday, the “Luobo Kuipao” branded Robotaxi app showed a sample fare of 34 yuan ($5.31) for a 3-kilometer ride (1.86 miles) from Sam’s Club. To a nearby subway station in Yizhuang.
The same route via Didi’s basic express car service costs about 14 yuan ($2.19). Didi’s sample premium level fare for the same route is 27 yuan.
So far, the novelty of the free, self-driving taxi has attracted many regular users to Yijuang. Wei said more than 20,000 users take at least 10 rides each month. It’s not clear how many people will continue to use the service when they have to pay for it, but Wei aims to verify an additional 100 Robotaxi cars each year.
Robotaxis race for US, China approval
Wei expects that in the next year or two, regulatory motion will broadly support testing of fully driverless vehicles — without safety drivers — on public roads.
According to a Credit Suisse report last month, ride-sharing costs a human driver about 60% of what a user pays.
on November 16, AlibabaBacked autonomous driving company AutoX claimed that its fully driverless robotaxis now operates in China’s largest single area – 168 square kilometers (65 sq mi) in the Pingshan district of the southern city of Shenzhen. AutoX said it began in January to allow the public to sign up for the Robotaxi ride. It was not immediately clear whether there was a cost to ride.
Baidu’s permit for commercial autonomous vehicle operation covers an area of 60 square kilometers, including a city called Yijuang, which is home to several businesses such as JD.com’s headquarters. The area is about half an hour’s drive south of central Beijing.
The Beijing city government has also made Yizhuang a test site for autonomous driving by allowing companies to test their projects. These include JD’s unmanned delivery vehicles and Baidu’s robotic taxi cars.
Baidu’s expansion plan
Last week, Baidu CEO Robin Lee said the company plans to Expand your Apollo Go robotics service to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030. This is currently above five cities.
The company also announced that its next generation of Robotaxi vehicles will cost half the price to build compared to the previous generation. The models are co-branded with three electric car makers: Chinese start-up WM Motor, Aeon – a spin-off of state-owned GAC – and state-owned BAIC Group’s ArcFox.
In June, Baidu and BAIC claimed they could build 1,000 driverless cars 480,000 yuan ($75,000) each, Vs. 1 million yuan on average for an autonomous car.
Wei joined Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group in May after seven years in a hobby limousine & chauffeur, where he was CEO. The company operates a high-end version of Didi.
He said Baidu’s strategy for building a robotics business is to reduce the cost of self-driving technology and target specific user scenarios.
Rather than fully utilizing lidar technology – which requires expensive sensors to produce detailed maps before robotics can operate – Wei generally talked about using algorithms to enhance efficient use of hardware.
On the consumer front, Wei said Apollo will focus on ways to give the user an experience beyond just a single mode of transportation — such as displaying the streets of Beijing 20 years ago on car windows, rather than the current street view.
Another strategy lies in finding ways to use robotaxi for non-travel tasks, such as space for medical treatment or a public library, he said.
Although Apollo is a small part of Baidu, its growth is in line with the CEO’s efforts to convince investors that the future of the broader company lies in artificial intelligence and related fields such as autonomous driving.
The fastest area of the company’s revenue growth in the third quarter was “non-online marketing revenue,” which grew 76% from a year earlier to 5.2 billion yuan ($806 million). Baidu attributed the growth to demand for cloud computing and its other AI businesses.
— CNBC Arjun Kharpali contributed to this report.
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