Chinese electric car startup Nio has announced that it will not enter the robotaxi (self-driving taxi) market. Robotaxi is not an exciting business model, and Nio is determined not to enter the space, said William Li, the company’s founder, chairman, and CEO. In an interview with local media following today’s Nio IN 2024 event in Shanghai, Li argued that smart driving technology should reduce accidents and free up driver’s energy. “Robotaxi technology will definitely mature,” Li said. “But is it necessarily a sustainable business? No, you’re overthinking it.”
“There’s a finite number of cabs that can be accommodated for a city, whether they’re being driven by human drivers or not,” Li said. “This means robotaxi will never be a business that becomes borderless like software or cloud services. Wake up!” Li added.
Tesla had initially planned to unveil its robotaxi on August 8, but the date has been pushed back to October 10, 2024. Back in November 2021, Xpeng announced plans to explore the robotaxi business in the second half of 2022. On July 25, He Xiaopeng, Xpeng’s chairman and CEO, posted on Weibo that his company would launch a highly competitive robotaxi at a steady pace in 2026. He implied that while Xpeng will provide the vehicles, partners will handle the operations.
Chinese IT company Baidu’s robotaxi platform, Apollo Go, currently operates in about a dozen Chinese cities. Earlier this month, ride-hailing drivers in Wuhan, Hubei province, raised concerns that the service was taking business away from them, sparking widespread attention.
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