On April 24, Xiaoma Zhixing announced that it won the bid for the 2022 taxi capacity index in Nansha District, Guangzhou, becoming the first autonomous driving enterprise in China to obtain a taxi business license.
The company also obtained a license from Beijing to pilot commercialize self-driving mobility services to the public in November 2021, and now it has obtained a license to operate self-driving taxis in Nansha District, Guangzhou, which means that its commercialization road has evolved again. Xiaoma Zhixing plans to continue to commercialize its self-driving mobility business in other first-tier cities by 2023.
It is reported that the Xiaoma Zhixing was allowed to invest 100 self-driving taxis in Nansha, Guangzhou, and the winning bid was used for 5 years. From May this year, Xiaoma Zhixing plans to carry out charging operations within 800 square kilometers of Nansha in Guangzhou, and gradually expand to the whole city, with the same pricing standard as Guangzhou taxis, operating from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
According to the current domestic traffic regulations and automatic driving test regulations, the driver's seat of the self-driving taxi also needs to be equipped with a driver, but the driver's identity is a "safety officer" and will not drive the vehicle during driving. The rear passengers are equipped with an LCD display that shows information such as starting travel, driving route and road visualization.
Although it is still equipped with drivers, self-driving taxis must be aimed at reducing operating costs and lowering charges in the future. If the self-driving taxi cannot remove the safety officer, not only will the labor cost not be reduced, but the on-board cost of equipment such as automatic driving will also increase, so that the loss-making business is destined to be done by no one.
According to the data, Xiaoma Zhixing was founded in 2016, is a technology company focusing on artificial intelligence, automatic driving technology research and development, with R & D centers in Silicon Valley in the United States and Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou in China, and established cooperation with Toyota, GAC, FAW and other vehicle brands. As of February 2021, the company's valuation has exceeded $5.3 billion.
In addition to Xiaoma Zhixing, the field of self-driving taxis has been entered by well-known driverless manufacturers or car companies such as Tesla, Baidu Apollo, Google Waymo, Uber, etc., and autonomous taxis will become a new development direction in the future.
However, limited by policies, technologies and related legal factors, the so-called "self-driving taxi" operating model launched by some car companies or brands is actually in the initial stage of development, and some self-driving taxis only support driving in the corresponding area, and passengers are mostly "experience".
With the first domestic autonomous driving enterprise to obtain a taxi business license, this field will usher in more commercial development in the future, and the number of self-driving taxis will also be significantly increased, and it is expected to become a normalized travel tool for public transportation.