In 2004, a movie called “I, Robot” was released in the United States, and what attracted me most at that time was neither the wonderful plot nor the grand proposition of whether humans and robots can coexist peacefully, but the Audi RSQ driven by the protagonist in the film.
In the film, the concept car can drive autonomously, and the owner can read the newspaper, sleep, and play games after getting in the car, and then the vehicle will automatically deliver you to your destination.
This kind of futuristic cool imagination once fascinated me when I first entered elementary school, fantasizing about how cool it would be if taxis could do the same one day.
Now that more than 20 years have passed, the childhood self has remained in the past, but the difference is that driverless taxis are becoming a reality.
On June 22, 2025, ten Tesla Model Ys turned into Robotaxi and drove on the streets of Austin, Texas, which was not only the beginning of Musk’s layout of Robotaxi, but also Tesla’s self-help after experiencing a decline in sales in many countries.
At the same time, Baidu Apollo Radish Run has established a mature operating model in Wuhan, China, and has gradually spread to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and other regions with Wuhan as its base camp, and even Dubai, the UAE trading capital far overseas, can be seen in Radish Run.
Shortly after Radish Run entered Dubai, Hello Travel, together with Ant Group and CATL, two major industry giants, established Shanghai Zaofu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., announcing its official entry into the Robotaxi track.
The global driverless taxi market will suddenly heat up in the midsummer of 2025, entering the Warring States era of separatism.
Behind this battle for future travel, it also determines the development of many industry giants, and with the entry of giants, this trillion-scale battle has begun.
Three routes, three challenges
The popularity of Robotaxi is inseparable from the huge market prospects.
According to Goldman SachsforecastBy 2030, China will have 500,000 Robotaxi, and the Robotaxi market size will also grow from $54 million in 2025 to $47 billion in 2023.
The composition of this cake is based on our country’s huge travel services. According to the data, as of October 2024, a total of 7.483 million copies have been distributed nationwideOnline ride-hailingDriver’s license, of which in October, the number of online car-hailing orders nationwide exceeded 1 billion, coupled with traditional taxis, the market is immeasurable, which is also one of the important reasons for attracting giants.
So far, the goal of the giants has been very clear, that is, to seize the market share of traditional taxis and online car-hailing, and quickly accumulate a first-mover advantage and achieve commercialization before the large-scale popularization of the new species of Robotaxi.
In achieving this goal, the technical route of enterprises can be divided into three types.
The first is the multi-sensor “heavy army”, the representative is Baidu Apollo radish running, lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and various sensor hardware can be up.
After all, the most important thing for driverless taxis is to ensure that the technology is reliable, and only safety redundancy can become the strongest shield for passengers to travel, and the cost is expensive.
Then there is the purely visual “Hussar”, which is representative of Tesla. In the same logic as Tesla’s car manufacturing, Tesla Robotaxi also abandoned the lidar array and appeared in the simple form of a near-mass-produced car, but since the first batch of only 10 vehicles, the reliability still needs to be verified.
Finally, there is the integration route of new players, such as Hello Travel, Ant Group, and CATL mentioned in this article.
In recent years, Hello Travel has not only done the two-wheeled market, but also entered the ride-hailing, car rental, and taxi markets. For Ant Group, the success of Robotaxi is directly related to the implementation progress of their AI, algorithms and other technologies.
According to SNE Research, the installed capacity of CATL’s power batteries in 2024 will reach 339.3GWh, a year-on-year increase of 31.7%, accounting for 37.9% of the overall market share.
After CATL, there are also BYD and LGNew energy, China Innovation Airlines, SK On, Panasonic and other companies are eyeing it. In particular, BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, and Sunwoda recorded year-on-year growth of 37.5%, 73.8%, and 74.1% respectively in 2024.
It can be seen that for Hello Travel, Ant Group, and CATL, the biggest challenge is market share, and only with a huge market share can business expansion be achieved.
In addition to multi-party integration, Hello Robotaxi also adopts the lidar route.
The “trump card” of the Big Three
Through the above analysis, it is not difficult to see the challenges faced by the three giants.
For Baidu Apollo Radish Run, the multi-hardware approach can greatly improve safety, but there is a problem of high cost, but by now, this situation has been solved.
Previously, the Robotaxi used by Radish Run in Wuhan was its fifth-generation Robotaxi, with a bicycle cost of up to 480,000 yuan, but with the increase in scale and the decline of lidar hardware, Radish Run’s Robotaxi has also opened the road to cost reduction.
Some time ago, Baidu’s sixth-generation unmanned vehicle Apollo RT6 was officially delivered to Radish Run, which is equipped with Baidu Apollo’s sixth-generation intelligent system, and the cost of a bicycle is only 204,600 yuan, and the cost has directly dropped by 60%.
On the other hand, the unit price of lidar has also become lower and lower, from tens of thousands of yuan to several thousand yuan, and in the automobile market, it has been decentralized from 200,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan models to models in the early 100,000 yuan.
It can be seen that with the increasing market size, the cost of bicycles will only get lower and lower, and the cost dilemma obviously cannot trap Radish Run.
In addition, Radish Run also has a first-mover advantage, that is, scale. At present, Radish Run has landed in more than a dozen cities, not only has a large number of road databases been established, but the operation of Wuhan has also matured.
Previously, Wang Yunpeng, vice president of Baidu Group and president of the intelligent driving business group, said that in 2024, Radish Run will be close to breakeven in Wuhan and is expected to achieve profitability in 2025.
Cost reduction, future scale, and imminent profitability will be the biggest trump card for Radish Run to win this life-and-death battle.
Tesla Robotaxi, on the other hand, needs to face the reliability of the visual route. In fact, Musk does not want to install lidar, but can’t install it, because at that time, a set of lidar solutions cost up to 100,000 yuan, which is obviously not affordable for ordinary people, simply put, it is not a volume product.
In this case, Musk can only choose the pure vision route, although the cost of lidar has dropped significantly, but Tesla has run through the route of “vision + end-to-end large model”, and Tesla also has an absolute advantage in algorithm optimization.
Finally, there is travel data, which is also Tesla’s absolute advantage. As of 2024, Tesla has produced more than 8 million vehicles, and the driving data of about 8 million car owners will become a huge confidence for Tesla’s unmanned driving.
In addition, Musk previously said that the vehicle can go out to take orders and make money when the owner is resting, if Tesla Robotaxi is verified by the market, then there may be a large number of car owners to open FSD business and join the Tesla Robotaxi fleet, which can not only increase FSD subscriptions, but also increase the market share of Tesla Robotaxi.
It can be seen that Tesla’s advantages lie in mature vision solutions and end-to-end large models, as well as travel data, potential fleets, etc.
Finally, Shanghai Zaofu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., the three major shareholders behind it have their own challenges, but their advantages also come from resource integration.
Taking Hello Travel as an example, it has been deeply involved in the bicycle field for many years and has grown into one of the largest giants in the shared bicycle industry, with huge travel data, such as short-distance travel density in a certain area in a certain period of time, as well as vehicle distribution areas, etc., and the travel data of these two-wheeled markets is expected to feed back the Robotaxi market and help Hello establish a mature vehicle delivery system.
Ant Group relies on its advantages in large models and algorithms, while CATL relies on batteries and smart skateboard chassis.
In terms of batteries, CATL, as an industry leader, does not need to be repeated in terms of reliability, and CATL also has the advantage of chocolate battery swapping, if applied to Robotaxi, it can greatly reduce charging time and make vehicle orders more efficient. The skateboard chassis can be deeply integrated with the chassis and the driving module to provide a safety base for autonomous driving.
At this point, the advantages of the three giants are very clear.
End
So which of these three companies has the greatest hope?
Profitability is always the vane of the business battlefield, no matter how moving the story, no matter how beautiful the prospect is, it is not as good as a beautiful financial report, and now, Radish Run has reached the profit point, perhaps the next leading Robotaxi company.
Of course, Tesla and Hello are also latecomers, after all, the door of the market has not yet closed, Robotaxi has not yet ushered in a complete large-scale popularization, and no one can guarantee what kind of surprises Tesla Robotaxi and Hello Travel with strong integration advantages will create for us.
But in any case, the drumbeat of the Robotaxi market has been beaten, and the answer to this trillion-dollar market test paper has gradually emerged with every tire turn.
