China and US vie for robotaxi lead

Although China has robotaxis operating in seven cities with Baidu, Pony.ai and WeRide providing most of the rides, the US has only one company, Waymo, offering a commercial, fully autonomous, robotaxi service with paying passengers and only in four cities – San Francisco, LA, Phoenix and Austin.

However Waymo is running at about the same level of robotaxi rides as China’s leading robotaxi company Baidu. Waymo’s 1500 robotaxis have provided 10 million rides and are running at 250,000 rides a week; Baidu has around 1,000 robotaxis which provided over 1.4 million rides in Q1.

WeRide has 400 robotaxis and Pony.ai has 300 robotaxis with plans to have 1,000 by the end of this year and 2,000-3,000 by the end of 2026.

Waymo intends to increase its robotaxi fleet to 3,500 by 2026. Two months ago it started putting robotaxis on the road in in Tokyo for ride-hailing but they will initially have drivers and are being used for data collection.



In the US, GM’s Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox are still doing trials and Tesla wants to start robotaxi trials in Austin this week but has run up against local objections. No one else except Waymo has a paid-for commercial service.

Goldman Sachs reckons that there will be around 500,000 robotaxis operating across more than 10 cities in China by 2030 with a potential revenue of $47 billion by 2035, up from $54 million in 2025. It is forecasting 90% CAGR 2025-30 for robotaxis in the US to pull in revenues of $7 billion by 2030.

Uber says it plans to trial robotaxis in London next year.

David Manners

David Manners

David Manners has more than forty-years experience writing about the electronics industry, its major trends and leading players. As well as writing business, components and research news, he is the author of the site's most popular blog, Mannerisms. This features series of posts such as Fables, Markets, Shenanigans, and Memory Lanes, across a wide range of topics.

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