Baidu said Apollo Go, its autonomous ride-hailing service, provided 3.1 million fully driverless operational rides in the third quarter of 2025, with year-over-year growth accelerating to 212% from 148% in the previous quarter. In China, Apollo Go says it has achieved 100% fully driverless operations in all cities where it operates, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Haikou and Sanya, achieving "positive unit economics" in some of these locations. To date, Apollo Go fleets have accumulated 140 million fully driverless autonomous kilometres.
Apollo Go is aiming to expand globally. In Switzerland, Apollo Go has established a strategic partnership with PostBus, a public transport operator to launch an on-demand autonomous mobility service. Apollo Go said it has received fully driverless commercial operation permits in Abu Dhabi, , while in Hong Kong, Apollo Go expanded its open-road testing zone to include Kowloon and Kwun Tong District.
"In China, we are the undisputed market leader," Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, said on an earnings call. "Through the first three quarters this year, our ride volumes were over 15x higher than our nearest domestic peers according to publicly disclosed data....Scale matters a lot. The reason we are able to achieve a leading position in autonomous driving technology on a global basis is that we have the scale. We have encountered many issues, corner cases others have not seen. We were able to train our models to handle those cases and become smarter and smarter."
Arguing that robotaxis have reached a tipping point, both in China and in the U.S, Li suggested that word of mouth has created positive social media feedback, which will propel the opening or loosening of related regulations. Source: Seeking Alpha transcript
