“This massive cost reduction will enable us to deploy tens of thousands of AVs [autonomous vehicles] across China. We are moving towards a future where taking a robotaxi will be half the cost of taking a taxi today,” Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu, said in a press release.
Baidu already has a small fleet of robotaxis running in 10 Chinese cities, but plans to start massive expansions of their services in 2023, ultimately seeking to have over 100,000 Apollo RT6 models on the road, according to the BBC.
“Our overseas robotaxi expansion is still under planning [sic],” a Baidu spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation, adding that the company tests driverless vehicles in California for research and development purposes.
Tesla hopes to launch its own robotaxi model sometime next year and start mass production in 2024, according to the WSJ.
Tesla did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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