Baidu Granted China's First-Ever Permits for Commercial Fully Driverless Ride-Hailing Services

Baidu, Inc. has secured the first permits in China to offer commercial fully driverless robotaxi services to the public on open roads. Apollo Go, Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service, is now authorised to collect fares for robotaxi rides - completely without human drivers in the car - in the cities of Chongqing and Wuhan.

To receive the permits, Baidu's robotaxis have undergone multiple steps of testing and licensing, starting from testing with a safety operator in the driving seat, to testing with a safety operator in the passenger seat, before finally receiving authorisation to operate with no human driver or operator in the vehicle.

Baidu says its robotaxis come with multi-layer mechanisms to ensure ultimate safety, including the autonomous driving system, monitoring redundancy, remote driving capability and a robust safety operation system.

Its commercial services are backed by real-world data including a total test mileage of over 32 million kilometers (~20 million miles) driven by Baidu's AVs to date.

Having already expanded to all first-tier cities in China, covering Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Apollo Go has now surfaced to become the world's largest robotaxi service provider, recently reaching the milestone of more than one million orders.

"This is a tremendous qualitative change," says Wei Dong, Vice President and Chief Safety Operation Officer of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Group. "Fully driverless cars providing rides on open roads to paying customers means we have finally come to the moment that the industry has been longing for. We believe these permits are a key milestone on the path to the inflection point when the industry can finally roll out fully autonomous driving services at scale."

Founded in 2000, Baidu's mission is to make the complicated world simpler through technology. Baidu is a leading AI company with strong Internet foundation, trading on the NASDAQ under "BIDU" and HKEX under "9888."