Today's top three stocks in terms of trading volume for the A-share market are Sokon Industry Group Stock, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Group Corp., Ltd., and BAIC BluePark New Energy Technology, all of which are auto stocks, which is quite rare. In terms of product structure, the operating income of products worth 10-30 billion yuan are 401/1,288/60 million yuan, respectively.

Baidu Group leads the gains on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with intraday gains surpassing 12%.

Luobu KuaiPao has expanded its reach in Wuhan and the online car-hailing and self-driving car sectors have seen significant growth, which has in turn driven up the share prices of all kinds of "car"-related sectors.

The self-driving concept has sparked a wave of limit up, with Zhengzhou Tiamaes Technology and Jingwei Hengrun welcoming a 20% increase.

In terms of ETFs, Huatai Bairui Intelligent Driving ETF and Guotai Intelligent Automobile ETF rose more than 3%; Huaxia Intelligent Vehicle ETF, Huitianfu Intelligent Vehicle ETF Fund, Fuguo Intelligent Automobile ETF, Penghua Fund Intelligent Network Automobile ETF, Huaxia Fund Automobile Parts ETF, Guotai Fund Automobile ETF, EFUND Fund Automobile Parts ETF, Haifutong Fund Automobile Parts ETF followed suit.

Baidu's autonomous driving travel service platform, Luobu KuaiPao, has already begun offering passenger-carrying testing and operational services in 11 cities, and is conducting fully unmanned autonomous driving travel service testing in Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. Of these, Wuhan is the largest autonomous driving operation service area.

Baidu has invested 1,000 Luobu KuaiPao self-driving taxis in Wuhan, operating 24/7, and has completed a cumulative total of 5 million orders, with more and more passengers opting for this convenient mode of transportation.

However, an insider at Baidu said that doubts surround rumors that 1,000 Luobu KuaiPao taxis are operating in Wuhan, since the exact number has never been made public.

Wuhan users who have experienced self-driving said: "After work, if I don't want to wait for the bus, I call Luobu KuaiPao. It's the first time I've experienced self-driving, and the fare is very cheap, only 2.9 yuan."

It is reported that the cost of a 10-kilometer journey on a Luobu KuaiPao self-driving taxi in Wuhan is 4-16 yuan, while a regular online car-hailing taxi costs 18-30 yuan.

Baidu said that Luobu KuaiPao aims to achieve breakeven in Wuhan by the end of 2024, and plans to enter a fully profitable period by 2025.

Guotai Junan said that Luobu KuaiPao's successful business model in Wuhan could be replicated elsewhere, and that autonomous driving could well challenge the traditional taxi and online car-hailing industries.

As for the smart driving industry, recent policy tailwinds abound.

The notice on publishing the names of the pilot cities for the "Car-Road-Cloud Integration" application of intelligent connected vehicles was issued, and 20 cities (united) were designated as pilot cities for the "Car-Road-Cloud Integration" application of intelligent connected vehicles.

Beijing plans to support the use of self-driving cars for urban public electric bus transportation, online car-hailing, car rental and other urban travel services.

During the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Shanghai issued the country's first demonstration application license for driverless and intelligent connected cars.

Guotai Junan's research report pointed out that there are three mature conditions for self-driving to challenge the taxi industry. The first is the maturity of technology. On May 15, 2024, Baidu announced the world's first autonomous driving large model ADFM that supports L4 level, and Baidu believes that its autonomous driving technology is safer than human driving, with a safety level more than 10 times higher than that of human drivers, achieving comprehensive coverage of complex scenes at the city level. The second is the decrease in the cost of individual cars. The cost of the sixth generation unmanned car is only 0.2 million yuan, and the cost reduction brings the possibility of profitability to individual cars. The third is policy and infrastructure support. The Notice on the Pilot Work of Intelligent Networked Driving Access and Road Test issued at the end of 2023 provides policy support, and the recent construction of car-road cloud provides infrastructure for self-driving. With these three conditions in place, self-driving's challenge to the car rental industry is theoretically feasible.

As the wind rises, the social concern has been upgraded to the main theme. The upgrade of a theme to the main line requires the assistance of social attention. ChatGPT was released in October 2022, and the AI market didn't take off until it was heavily promoted by the media in February 2023. This preliminary success of the Carrot Run business model may trigger discussions in society about the structural unemployment of taxi and online car-hailing drivers caused by technological progress, which we have also observed in the Baidu search index. In addition, Tesla may further catalyze the development of the industry by launching robotaxis on August 8th. Autonomous driving is expected to become the main market trend in the next three months.