China’s Baidu says it’s running 250,000 robotaxi rides a week — same as Alphabet’s Waymo

BEIJING — As Baidu ramps up its robotaxi operations worldwide, fully driverless weekly rides as of Oct. 31 have now surpassed 250,000 orders, according to a spokesperson for the company’s driverless car unit Apollo Go.

That’s on par with what Waymo reported in late April for its weekly paid U.S. rides. When contacted by CNBC, Waymo did not have a new specific figure to share. The Alphabet-backed robotaxi operator primarily operates in San Francisco and Los Angeles in California and Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo partners with Uber in Austin and Atlanta.

The ramp up in Baidu’s robotaxi capabilities comes as Chinese and U.S. companies have been competing for leadership in advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, electric cars and autonomous driving.

It was not clear for how long Apollo Go has been operating 250,000 rides a week. For the quarter ended June 30, the company averaged about 169,000 rides a week based on CNBC calculations of the 2.2 million fully driverless robotaxi rides disclosed for the period.

Baidu’s Apollo Go primarily operates robotaxis in Wuhan and parts of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in mainland China. The company is also expanding to Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and, most recently, Switzerland. Robotaxis typically must undergo phases of public testing before local regulators allow companies to charge fares.

Apollo Go said it has received 17 million robotaxi ride orders to date, and that its cars have driven 240 million kilometers (149 million miles), with 140 million fully driverless rides.

On safety, Apollo Go disclosed on average there has been one airbag deployment incident for every 10.1 million kilometers driven, but so far there’s has not been any major accident involving human injury or death.

Baidu is scheduled to next release its quarterly results on Nov. 18 before U.S. market open. The company is set to hold its annual tech conference in Beijing on Nov. 13.

Weekly robotaxi figures from Chinese rivals Pony.ai and WeRide were not immediately available. Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for an update to the figures shared in April.