According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily on October 9th (Reporter: Huang Xinyi), as Musk prepares for Tesla's Robotaxi debut, Robin Li has taken action.

According to exclusive information obtained by reporters from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Radish Run plans to launch self-driving taxi services in Hong Kong, and this is also expected to be its first business expansion outside the mainland market.

According to Baidu's financial report, in the second quarter of 2024, Baidu's self-driving service provided about 0.899 million automatic driving orders through Radish Run, a 26% year-on-year increase. As of July 28, 2024, Radish Run has provided over 7 million self-driving travel service orders to the public.

On June 19, Radish Run started providing 100% fully autonomous taxi services in almost all of Wuhan. Baidu's sixth generation of self-driving car RT6 has begun large-scale testing on fully autonomous roads. In addition to Wuhan, Radish Run is also conducting fully autonomous self-driving travel services and testing in Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai.

Furthermore, reporters from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily have further learned that Baidu is actively expanding Radish Run services to other cities in China. In addition, Radish Run is also expanding overseas. There are reports that Baidu has started discussions with foreign auto manufacturers, online car-hailing platforms, and other technology companies to deploy Radish Run overseas through local partners. However, the timing and location of overseas joint ventures have not been finally determined. Regarding this, sources familiar with the matter told reporters from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that there are indeed related deployment plans.

According to previous reports, in 2016, Baidu had already obtained the 15th autonomous driving test license issued by California. In early January 2018, Baidu conducted the first test of the Apollo 2.0 driverless car on a California highway. In addition, Baidu has collaborated with SB Drive (a autonomous driving technology development company under Japan's SoftBank Group) and King Long to develop the Japanese version of the 'Apolong' driverless car.

In addition to Baidu, many self-driving companies such as Pony.ai, WeRide, and others have already made early strides in overseas markets.

At the end of September this year, Pony.ai and Uber announced the establishment of a strategic partnership to jointly promote Pony.ai's self-driving vehicles on the Uber platform, which will first launch in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi by the end of this year. A group of Pony.ai self-driving vehicles will be available on the Uber App, providing services to consumers. In the European market, Pony.ai and Renault Group are working on developing a localized version of L4 level self-driving minibuses.

Pony.ai signed a memorandum of understanding with ComfortDelGro, a taxi operator in Singapore, in July this year to prepare for the launch of Pony.ai's self-driving taxi services in Singapore and other countries later this year. Previously, Pony.ai had also conducted operations and cooperation on self-driving technology in South Korea, Luxembourg, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

It should be noted that the overseas expansion of domestic self-driving services faces challenges such as policy environment, user habits, and localization services. At the same time, the global market currently has many strong competitors, such as Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla, who are all accelerating the development of self-driving taxi services. Domestic companies still need to enhance their competitiveness, integrate into local market environments to establish themselves and achieve business growth.