Author | Wang Xiaojuan
Edit | Zhou Zhiyu
The battle for Robotaxi has entered the white-hot stage.
On October 11, Beijing time, Tesla's Robotaxi, which has repeatedly jumped tickets, was finally officially released, and the model was officially named Cybercab, and there was no steering wheel and pedals. The cost is controlled to be less than US$30,000 (about 212,000 yuan), and the operating cost is as low as 30 to 40 cents per mile (about 2.1 to 2.8 yuan currently).
Of course, the realization of this goal will have to wait until 2026.
Competitors are certainly not far behind. On the eve of the release of Tesla's Robotaxi, Baidu's rival on the other side of the ocean, Baidu's Radish Run, plans to take a step towards a larger market and plan to go overseas.
On October 9, a person familiar with the matter revealed to Wall Street that Baidu Radish Express is actively carrying out its global layout in the near future, has conducted in-depth communication with a number of international companies, and plans to enter overseas markets, or first test and deploy driverless taxis in Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East.
Wall Street has also learned that Baidu is about to release the Apollo autonomous driving open platform 10.0, which will be equipped with Baidu's latest autonomous driving model ADFM (Autonomous Driving Foundation Model), which will greatly improve the safety, intelligence and ease of use of the autonomous driving open platform, and this version is designed for global users.
At this time, the plan to go overseas was announced, and the carrot run was obviously going to be tough with Tesla's Robotaxi.
However, for Chinese manufacturers, autonomous driving going overseas is not new.
As far as Baidu is concerned, in fact, as early as 2016, it obtained a California autonomous driving test license.
In addition, many autonomous driving companies competing in the capital market in the first half of this year are also gaining greater growth by driving into overseas markets. They are not only striving for overseas OEMs to become suppliers of assisted driving, but also trying to implement L4 Robotaxi in overseas markets.
For example, Pony.ai has carried out autonomous driving technology and landing cooperation in Korea, Luxembourg, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E. and other places; Another autonomous driving company, WeRide's Robotaxi, was on the streets of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., in August this year.
In the past decade, autonomous driving has not only been a highland for many talented people, but also considered one of the best ways to present AI. Ten years on, autonomous driving has moved from technology competition to the second half of commercialization.
In the process of large-scale commercialization, the current leading one is still the radish run.
Since last year, in Wuhan and other cities, many ordinary consumers can also experience Baidu's radish run on the street.
According to Baidu's financial report for the second quarter of 2024, about 899,000 autonomous driving orders were supplied by Radish Express, a year-on-year increase of 26%, and the total service volume has exceeded 7 million. In terms of orders, Carrot Express has become the world's largest autonomous driving travel service platform.
In contrast, other Robotaxi is only within the prescribed range of some cities, and the scope of commercialization is even smaller.
However, they are also accelerating. Another company that is faster in terms of commercialization is Waymo, a driverless mobility service company owned by Alphabet across the ocean.
In March, Waymo announced that it would offer driverless passenger service to employees in Austin, Texas, starting March 6. According to data released in August, Waymo has reached 100,000 Robotaxi orders per week.
The reason why Tesla, which has just held a press conference, has become a fierce competitor in the Robotaxi field is because its self-driving capabilities have been reflected in FSD.
This year, Tesla's FSD V12 version has been able to achieve an "end-to-end" AI-powered autonomous driving solution. At present, in North America, FSD has been widely installed on the Model 3 and Model Y. In addition, there is more and more news about the entry of FSD into China, which is all unsettling news for opponents.
In the world, the Robotaxi track is so hot because this industry is considered to be a trillion-dollar market with extremely high profit margins.
According to the forecast of Frost &Sullivan, Robotaxi will achieve large-scale commercialization around 2026, and it is expected that Robotaxi will be widely adopted worldwide by 2030, when the penetration rate of Robotaxi in China's smart mobility will reach 31.8%, and by 2035, it will reach 69.3%. It is estimated that by 2030, the market size of Robotaxi in China and the world will reach 488.8 billion yuan/834.9 billion yuan respectively.
He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xpeng Motors, also gave a judgment: "The Robotaxi industry will enter a turning point in 2026." With technical reserves, Xpeng is also trying to get a piece of the pie in this track, and is recently expanding the Robotaxi team, and the annual salary of many positions is up to nearly one million, and Xpeng's Robotaxi will also be listed in 2026.
Also actively joining the market is Yuanrong Qixing, whose CEO Zhou Guang believes that end-to-end is the most promising path to general physical AI, and it is only end-to-end 1.0 at this stage. In the next few years, physical AI will usher in continuous technological breakthroughs, and Robotaxi may not be so far away. He revealed that Yuanrong has cooperated with a number of OEMs in mass production, and is also actively deploying the large-scale operation of Robotaxi based on production vehicles.
And according to Cathy ·, founder and CEO of Ark Investments, the Robotaxi business will be a $4 to $5 trillion revenue opportunity in "the next five to ten years." This is a SaaS model with a gross profit margin of more than 80%. ”
In contrast, even car companies with high profit margins currently have profit margins below 30%.
This also explains why Musk has been emphasizing Robotaxi, and has previously admitted that he can sell cars at zero profit and rely on FSD to make money.
In the view of "Sister Wood", Robotaxi is also an industry with a large number of winners, "which company can get people from point A to point B the fastest and safest, and with as little waiting time as possible, will win most of the market share." ”
This also understands why everyone is rushing to a larger market and starting the mode of competing for the deer.
However, autonomous driving seems to be technically easy to realize, but when driving around the world, it will inevitably face constraints such as data security and regulations, which is also an issue that these manufacturers will inevitably face when competing with each other.
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