Baidu Expands Driverless Robotaxi Hours Into Nighttime in Wuhan
Baidu extends its fully driverless robotaxi service in Wuhan to operate from 7 am to 11 pm, utilizing advanced sensors for low-light conditions. The company's Apollo Go app sees massive ridership growth, though questions remain about the sustainability of these numbers.
Baidu significantly expands its driverless robotaxi service in Wuhan by extending operating hours from 9 am to 5 pm to a new window of 7 am to 11 pm. This update allows the public to ride in fully autonomous vehicles without a safety driver behind the wheel even in low-light nighttime conditions. The expanded service aims to cover one million customers across specific areas of the sprawling city of over 10 million people.
The company relies on a combination of third-party cameras, radar, and lidar to navigate safely in the dark, setting its approach apart from Tesla's vision-only system. Ridership for Baidu's Apollo Go hailing app surges as a result of these expansions, with the platform completing over 474,000 rides in the third quarter, marking a 311% increase year over year. However, observers question how many of these 1.4 million cumulative rides represent sustainable daily commutes versus subsidized novelty trips driven by promotional perks.
Wuhan stands out as a proactive partner in this deployment, acting as one of the first major Chinese cities to permit fully driverless operations without in-car safety monitors. To support its autonomous efforts, Baidu builds a competitive moat by developing a visual-language model powered by its Wenxin large AI model. This specialized technology helps the vehicles quickly identify and react to new or rare objects in complex, long-tail driving scenarios.