Baidu Apollo Go

Apollo Go (Luobo Kuaipao) is Baidu's driverless ride-hailing service, built on the Apollo autonomous driving platform the company has developed since 2017. Where Western robotaxi operators grew city by city, Apollo Go scaled through vehicle cost: its purpose-built Apollo RT6, unveiled in July 2022, was announced at 250,000 RMB (about 37,000 USD) per unit — roughly half its predecessor — with a detachable steering wheel that frees the front of the cabin. Baidu states the RT6 carries 38 sensors, including 8 lidars and 12 cameras, and 1,200 TOPS of onboard compute for SAE Level 4 operation. The operating figures are the reason this service matters. In the first quarter of 2026 Baidu reported 3.2 million fully driverless rides, up more than 120 percent year over year, with weekly rides peaking above 350,000 in March. Cumulative public rides passed 22 million as of April 2026, and the fleet had logged more than 330 million autonomous kilometres, of which over 220 million were fully driverless. For scale: those driverless kilometres are close to what Waymo reports in miles, while weekly ride volume sits within reach of Waymo's — two very different routes to a comparable operating scale. 2026 was the year the service left China in earnest. On 12 June the Swiss federal roads office granted a Level 4 operating permit to AmiGo, a joint service with PostBus, the bus operator of Swiss Post, covering roughly 80 square kilometres in eastern Switzerland — a Chinese operator entering European public transport ahead of its American rivals. On 23 July Hong Kong's Transport Department issued the city's first fully driverless trial permit, with testing starting 27 July on Airport Island; Baidu describes it as the first fully driverless trial in any right-hand-drive market. Road testing began in London in July 2026 with Freenow by Lyft, with public rides indicated for 2027. The expansion is not linear, and the catalogue records that too: in March 2026 Apollo Go temporarily suspended driverless testing and commercial service in the United Arab Emirates, citing arrangements of the relevant authorities — a reminder that permits in this industry can be withdrawn as well as granted.

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