China's Baidu says it's running 250,000 robotaxis a week — same as Alphabet's Waymo did this spring

BEIJING — As Baidu ramps up its robotaxi operations worldwide, afloat driverless play rides arsenic of Oct. 31 person present surpassed 250,000 orders, according to a spokesperson for the company's driverless car portion Apollo Go.

That's connected par with what Waymo reported successful precocious April for its play paid U.S. rides. When contacted by CNBC, Waymo did not person a caller circumstantial fig to share. The Alphabet-backed robotaxi relation chiefly operates successful San Francisco and Los Angeles successful California and Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo partners with Uber successful Austin and Atlanta.

It was not wide for however agelong Apollo Go has been operating 250,000 rides a week. For the 4th ended June 30, the institution averaged astir 169,000 rides a week based connected CNBC calculations of the 2.2 cardinal afloat driverless robotaxi rides disclosed for the period.

Baidu's Apollo Go chiefly operates robotaxis successful Wuhan and parts of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen successful mainland China. The institution is besides expanding to Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and, astir recently, Switzerland. Robotaxis typically indispensable acquisition phases of nationalist investigating earlier section regulators let companies to complaint fares.

Apollo Go said it has received 17 cardinal robotaxi thrust orders to date, and that its cars person driven 240 cardinal kilometers (149 miles), with 140 cardinal afloat driverless rides.

On safety, Apollo Go disclosed connected mean determination has been 1 airbag deployment incidental for each 10.1 cardinal kilometers driven, but truthful acold there's has not been immoderate large mishap involving quality wounded oregon death.

Baidu is scheduled to adjacent merchandise its quarterly results connected Nov. 18 earlier U.S. marketplace open. The institution is acceptable to clasp its annual tech league successful Beijing connected Nov. 13.

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