Chinese robotaxi developer WeRide has completed 147,128 trips and chauffeured over 60,000 passengers safely to their destinations in its first year of service—which still includes a backup driver—in the southern city of Guangzhou, the company said.
WeRide claims to be the most experienced of the robotaxi operators. In April, the company’s COO Zhang Li told KrASIA that WeRide could roll out truly driverless robotaxi services without safety operators by 2021. “We’re sure to be the first one to make it,” he said.
Meanwhile, more than 100,000 people have used the Apollo autonomous vehicles of search engine giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) until September, KrAISA reported. Baidu rolled out test rides of its robotaxis in cities including Changsha, Chongqing, Cangzhou, as well as Beijing, from September 2019.
Both the WeRide and Baidu services still require safety operators on the driver seat to monitor the real-time situations.
Read this: China pushes boundaries of self-driving cars with WeRide and Baidu
This article is part of KrASIA’s “Key Stat” series, where KrASIA picks and presents the most significant figures of the day’s technology and business world.