Super cheap robotaxi rides spark widespread anxiety in China

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In China, it’s possible to travel six miles in a driverless taxi for justabout 50 cents.

Self-driving cars, commonly called robotaxis, are being popularized at cut-throat prices in Wuhan, a sprawling metropolis of over 11 million people in central China. It has ambitions to become the world’s first driverless city, even as the vehicles often struggle to navigate the streets.

“You’ll never have to buy a car,” a passenger inside one of the white robotaxi sedans said in a video that has been viewed over 80 million times on Chinese social media platform Weibo since last week.

The fleet of 500 vehicles operating in the city belongs to Apollo Go, a unit of Chinese tech giant Baidu (BIDU). They serve an area that covers roughly half of Wuhan’s population, according to a May company release.

A major selling point is the price. Base fares start as low as 4 yuan (55 cents), compared with 18 yuan ($2.48) for a taxi driven by a human, state media Global Times reported on Wednesday.

The service launched in 2022 and started to gain traction during the first half of the year. The company aims to double its fleet to 1,000 cars by the end of 2024.Wuhan currently has around 17,000 regular cabs, according to the city’s transport bureau.

But the rapid adoption of the driverless taxis has rattled China’s gig economy workforce, which has suffered from stagnant wages because of deflationary forces stalking the economy following years of tight coronavirus restrictions and a real estate crisis.

“With the Chinese economy struggling a bit, Chinese people are likely much