Although A shares were sluggish again today, structural trends continued, with the smart online car-hailing sector breaking out against the trend and the self-driving car sector setting off a surge in limit-up, with more than 10 stocks such as Guangzhou Hi-Target Navigation Tech, Zhengzhou Tiamaes Technology, Shenzhen Soling Industrial, and Beijing Starneto Technology limit-up or rising over 10%. Baidu Group surged during trading, rising more than 12% to HKD 97.15 at one point. Overnight, the U.S. stock market saw Baidu close up 8.47% at $95.4.

On the ETF front, Huatai Bairui Fund's Intelligent Driving ETF and Guotai Fund's Intelligent Automobile ETF rose by 3.36% and 3.1%, respectively, while Huaxia Fund's Intelligent Vehicle ETF and Huitianfu Fund's Intelligent Vehicle ETF rose 2.92% and 2.87%, respectively. The auto parts sector followed suit, with Huaxia Fund's Automotive Parts ETF and YiFangDa Fund's Automotive Parts ETF up 2.26% and 1.88%, respectively.

In terms of news, the Beijing Autonomous Driving Regulations began soliciting opinions, which clearly stated support for the use of autonomous driving cars in public and rental travel scenarios. In addition, Shanghai has also issued the first batch of license plates for unmanned passenger vehicles. Against the backdrop of the nationwide deployment of the car-road-cloud project, commercial pathways have also begun to emerge.

Baidu's subsidiary, Luobo Kuaipao, is actively promoting autonomous driving travel. According to Baidu's first-quarter financial report, Luobo Kuaipao supplied approximately 0.826 million orders for autonomous driving in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 25%. As of April 19, Luobo Kuaipao has provided more than 6 million orders for autonomous driving travel services to the public.

GTJA pointed out in a research report that Luobo Kuaipao is expected to achieve profitability in the commercial model of autonomous driving ride-hailing. Luobo Kuaipao has opened ride-sharing testing and operations services in 11 cities and conducted fully unmanned autonomous driving travel service tests in Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Luobo Kuaipao is expected to achieve break-even by the end of 2024 in Wuhan and profit by 2025.

GTJA believes that Luobo Kuaipao's successful business model in Wuhan can be replicated elsewhere, and autonomous driving may challenge the taxi and online car-hailing industry.

There are nine A-share ETFs tracking the intelligent driving theme, the indices of which are the Intelligent Electric Car, CS Intelligent Car, and CS Vehicle Networking.

The China Securities Intelligent Electric Vehicle Index selects listed company securities whose main business involves intelligent electric vehicle power systems, perception systems, decision-making systems, execution systems, communication systems, vehicle production, and automotive after-sales as index samples to reflect the overall performance of listed company securities in the intelligent electric vehicle industry.

CS Intelligent Car, or the China Securities Intelligent Automobile Theme Index, selects companies that provide terminal perception and platform applications for smart cars and other representative companies that benefit from smart cars as samples, reflecting the overall performance of companies in the intelligent auto industry.

The China Securities Vehicle Networking Theme Index includes listed companies involved in content and service providers, software providers, hardware providers, auto manufacturers and other relevant areas.

In terms of the latest scale, Fu Guo Fund Intelligent Motor ETF has the largest scale, with a latest scale of 0.619 billion yuan. Huatai Bairui Fund's Intelligent Driving ETF, Huabao Fund's Intelligent Electric Vehicle ETF, and Huaxia Fund's Intelligent Car ETF all have scales exceeding 0.1 billion yuan.