Robotaxis on the roads: China’s Baidu eyes overseas rollout as autonomous driving race heats up

Chinese tech giant Baidu is reportedly planning to launch its robotaxi service outside of China as it looks to make inroads in the autonomous driving global market – a growing industry that other Chinese players as well as Western firms are racing towards.

The Beijing-based company is hoping to test and deploy its Apollo Go robotaxis in places including Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East, according to reports from the likes of Nikkei Asia and the Wall Street Journal that cited people familiar with the matter.

Baidu has been in discussions with companies and regulators in those places, the reports stated.

Apollo Go intends to release a new version of its autonomous-driving platform, Apollo 10.0,  that’s “designed for a global audience”, the Wall Street Journal quoted a representative as saying.

Baidu is already operating robotaxi services in multiple cities in China. It provided close to 900,000 rides in the second quarter of the year, up 26 per cent year-on-year, according to its latest earnings call. More than 7 million robotaxi rides in total had been operated as of late July.

Other Chinese operators are also looking to grab a slice of the autonomous driving pie.

Pony.ai and Singapore-based transport operator Comfort DelGro signed a deal in July to explore large-scale commercial robotaxi operations.

“(The collaboration) will extend the benefits of autonomous driving to a wider audience and to more regions, creating value to more people and societies,” said Pony.ai co-founder and CEO James Peng.

Pony.ai has also initiated autonomous driving partnerships in South Korea, Luxembourg, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.