On April 6, Musk announced that Tesla would launch a Robotaxi service on August 8. Autonomous driving has always been Tesla's specialty, and after years of technology accumulation, Robotaxi will be Tesla's sentinel battle to fully realize autonomous driving.
On April 7, Aion and Didi Autonomous Driving announced that their joint venture, Guangzhou Andi Technology Co., Ltd., was officially approved for industrial and commercial licenses, which means that its autonomous driving new energy production vehicle project "AIDI Plan" is one step closer to landing. The goal of the program is also to build a Robotaxi, with the first model capable of Level 4 autonomous driving expected to go into production next year.
The two news stories that have occurred in quick succession, both related to Roboxi, can't help but draw attention to the field again: Robotaxi is not a recent concept, it has been studied for so many years, how far away is it?
At present, the autonomous driving travel service platforms that have entered operation or trial operation in China mainly include Radish Run, WeRide, Pony.ai, etc.
Among them, the most well-known is Radish Run, which is backed by Baidu, is a part of the Apollo autonomous driving platform, launched in August 2021, and began commercial pilot services in November of the same year, and has so far opened L4 autonomous driving manned operation services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Wuhan, Changsha, Chengdu, Hefei, Yangquan, and Wuzhen.
In the above cities, as long as you download the Radish Express app, you can call an unmanned online car-hailing service, which looks very good. The opening of a route across the Yangtze River in Wuhan shows that more complex traffic scenarios such as elevated highways and ramps have been technically overcome.
However, compared with ordinary online car-hailing, Carrot Express still has obvious limitations, first of all, it can only operate in the specified area from 9 to 18 o'clock every day, and it is basically a non-central area, and it cannot be used all day long like ordinary online car-hailing. In Guangzhou, for example, users can only use some areas in Tianhe and Huangpu districts, and most of the city is still not in the service area.
At present, there are more than 200 stations in Guangzhou's operating area, mainly distributed along a number of traffic arteries, which can indeed meet the actual travel needs of some people, and Beijing and Wuhan have opened shuttle services to and from Daxing Airport and Tianhe Airport.
In addition, for safety reasons, autonomous vehicles will be slower, and the distance of less than 7 kilometers is expected to take 17 minutes, and passengers will generally be equipped with safety officers in the front seats, so passengers can only sit in the back seats.
In terms of tariffs, considering that driverless taxis are still in the testing stage, the operating costs are obviously not comparable with mature and commercial online ride-hailing platforms, and the platform needs to subsidize significantly to attract new users. For example, the original price of less than 7 kilometers is nearly 40 yuan, and it only costs about 4 yuan after the subsidy, which is indeed a very attractive trial price.
According to the official data, as of January 2, 2024, the total order volume has exceeded 5 million orders since it was launched for more than 3 years, and the order volume increased by 49% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of last year.
Headquartered in Guangzhou, WeRide is also a company that has been deeply involved in autonomous driving technology for 7 years, although the scale of operation is smaller than that of Radish Express, but it has a broad global vision, and is the only company with autonomous driving licenses in China, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.
Of course, the focus of WeRide is still in China. Although the official website says that WeRide Go, a Level 4 robotaxi service, has been provided in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Boao, Dalian and other places, there are only two cities on the app: Beijing and Guangzhou.
The experience of WeRide Go is similar to that of the Carrot Run, taking Guangzhou as an example, it can only be used in some areas of Huangpu District from 9 to 18 o'clock every day, and it can only be used at designated stops. The tariff seems to be much cheaper than the radish run, which is only about 20 yuan for a distance of less than 7 kilometers, but the platform subsidy is not as huge as the radish run, and you actually need to pay 18 yuan.
In addition, the number of convoys may not be as large as the turnip run, and the waiting time is longer than the turnip run, and it even takes more than 10 minutes in the morning and evening rush hour.
In terms of operational results, the official did not clearly disclose the number of orders for WeRide Go so far, and 51 Jun only found the results of the first month of opening the operation service in Guangzhou in December 2019: 8,396 orders, with an average of 270 times per day, and the scale of operation is obviously smaller than that of Radish Run.
For example, we have opened a number of L4 autonomous bus (Robobus) routes in Boao, Nanjing, Guangzhou and other places, and users can check the arrival of vehicles in real time on WeRide Go, and the fare is only 2 yuan like ordinary buses. In addition, WeRide also operates autonomous buses in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
In addition, WeRide operates self-driving sanitation vehicles (Robosweeper) in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Dalian and Zhengzhou, which have the ability to sweep roads around the clock, sprinkle water and dust reduction, and spray and sanitize; the self-driving freight vehicle (Robovan) developed for urban distribution scenarios has also carried out public road tests and received commercial orders from logistics companies.
It can be seen that although the scale of operation of WeRide in the single aspect of online car-hailing is not as large as that of Radish Express, its territory is very broad, and its various businesses have so far earned more than 100 million US dollars in revenue, and its business prospects are also optimistic about domestic and foreign capital, with a cumulative financing of 1.2 billion US dollars, a valuation of 5.1 billion US dollars, and many rumors of an IPO in the United States.
It is worth mentioning that the high-end intelligent driving system equipped with the Chery Star Era, the "shell" model of the Zhijie S7, is nominally provided by Bosch, but in fact, the Bosch team has carried out in-depth cooperation with WeRide, which is one of the investors of the latter.
Founded at the end of 2016, Pony.ai is another Guangzhou-based autonomous driving technology company, focusing on L4 autonomous driving online car-hailing, but also involved in the field of autonomous driving trucks and passenger cars, with autonomous driving photos in China and the United States.
At present, Pony.ai provides self-driving taxi services in Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen in China, Fremont and Irvine, California, and has been connected to ride-hailing platforms such as Cao Cao and Ruqi Travel, and has jointly developed autonomous driving technology with brands such as Toyota and GAC.
Unlike the previous two companies, Pony.ai's "territory" in Guangzhou is almost the entire Nansha district, covering a much larger area, and operating longer hours (8:00-22:30 every day), using not electric vehicles but Lexus RX or Toyota Sena, and has also obtained permission not to have a safety officer in the front row. Of course, users still have to get on and off at fixed stops.
In terms of cost, Pony.ai PonyPilot+ is similar to WeRide Go, the original price of 5.6 kilometers is 18.7 yuan, but the current subsidy is large, and new users can enjoy the first order for free, and in fact, they only need to pay about 5 yuan, which is indeed much cheaper than Didi.
Pony.ai only announced the number of orders at the end of 2019 on the first anniversary of PonyPilot's operation: more than 70,000 times, and then did not announce the results. In March 2022, Pony.ai completed its Series D financing with a valuation of $8.5 billion.
Robotaxi is an industry that is still incubating, but there is no doubt that this is a very promising market, and some consulting companies predict that the global Robotaxi market will reach $2 trillion in 2030.
For users, Robotaxi still has restrictions on the operating area and time compared with general online car-hailing, and it is not as waving and stopping as taxis, and it may not become a daily travel mode for most people.
If you happen to be in the operating area, would you like to try these robotaxis?
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