In China and the United States, the idea of producing driverless taxis is dreamed of by both large manufacturers and companies in the technology sector – for example, Tesla and Waymo. The situation is much the same in China, as internet giant Baidu is already actively testing its Apollo Go driverless taxis in several major cities. The founder of the Chinese startup Nio, William Li, recently said that his company does not see the point in creating a robotaxi.
Image source: NIO
These statements were made, as CnEVPost notes, at an event in Shanghai at which the Nio Phone 2 smartphone was presented, implying deep integration with electric vehicles of the same brand. The head of Nio is generally a supporter of the development of autopilot technologies, as they “will reduce the number of accidents on the roads and free up the driver’s energy for other things.” However, the idea of creating a robotic taxi from the point of view of a business project does not inspire him categorically. The technology behind robotaxis, according to Mr. Lee, will undoubtedly be constantly improved, but betting on this business in the long term does not make sense, if you think about it carefully, as he says.
A limited number of taxis can operate on the roads of each city, regardless of the mode of management. “This means that robotaxis will never become a borderless business, like software or cloud services have become,” the Nio founder made clear. Secondly, he doesn’t really like the idea of replacing drivers with robots as such, since it puts people out of work. By the way, the competing company XPeng does not suffer from such prejudices, and is going to introduce its robotic taxis by 2026. This type of automated guided vehicles will be operated by XPeng’s taxi fleet partners, it will simply supply them with the necessary cars. Let us recall that the active activity of Baidu robotic taxis (Apollo Go) in Wuhan has already caused discontent among local taxi drivers who cannot withstand competition with automation.