Baidu Apollo Go Hits 300,000 Weekly Rides: China's Robotaxi Giant Expands to South Korea | Taha Abbasi

While American robotaxi companies battle for a handful of cities, China’s Baidu has quietly built the world’s largest autonomous ride-hailing network. Taha Abbasi examines how Apollo Go reached 300,000 weekly rides and what its expansion to South Korea means for the global autonomous mobility race.

Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi service has crossed a landmark threshold: 300,000 weekly rides across its Chinese operating cities. The milestone, reported by multiple sources and discussed on Reddit’s r/SelfDrivingCars community, represents an operational scale that no Western robotaxi company has yet achieved. For context, Waymo — widely considered the leader in the US market — recently reported serving approximately 150,000 weekly rides across its expanding network.

The numbers tell a stark story: China’s autonomous mobility industry is not just keeping pace with the United States. In terms of pure operational volume, it has surged ahead.

How Apollo Go Got Here

Apollo Go launched its first fully driverless robotaxi service in China on July 20, 2022, making it the first company to offer Level 4 autonomous rides in the country. Since then, the service has expanded methodically across multiple Chinese cities, building operational expertise and accumulating the millions of autonomous driving miles needed to refine its technology.

Baidu’s approach differs from Western competitors in several important ways. First, the company benefits from a regulatory environment that has been broadly supportive of autonomous vehicle testing and deployment. Chinese regulators have created designated testing zones and gradually expanded operational permissions, allowing Apollo Go to scale faster than would be possible under the fragmented US regulatory framework.

Second, Baidu leverages its position as China’s leading AI company and search engine operator. The company’s expertise in machine learning, computer vision, and large-scale data processing directly applies to autonomous driving challenges. Apollo Go is not a standalone startup burning through venture capital — it is backed by the full resources of one of China’s technology giants.

Third, the Chinese market is uniquely suited to robotaxi adoption. Dense urban environments, high ride-hailing penetration, and consumer openness to new technology have created strong demand for autonomous ride-hailing services.

The South Korea Expansion

Perhaps more significant than the domestic milestone is Apollo Go’s reported expansion to South Korea. This represents Baidu’s first major international deployment of autonomous ride-hailing technology and signals the company’s ambition to become a global player in autonomous mobility.

South Korea is a strategic choice for several reasons. The country has advanced telecommunications infrastructure (essential for vehicle-to-everything communication), a tech-savvy population, and regulators who have shown willingness to accommodate autonomous vehicle testing. Samsung, Hyundai, and other Korean technology leaders have their own autonomous vehicle programs, creating an ecosystem that could accelerate deployment.

For Taha Abbasi, the international expansion is the most important part of this story. Domestic success in China is impressive but could be attributed to favorable regulatory conditions and market dynamics. Success in South Korea would validate that Apollo Go’s technology and operational model can work across different regulatory environments, driving cultures, and infrastructure conditions.

Implications for the US Robotaxi Market

The Apollo Go milestone should serve as a wake-up call for the US autonomous vehicle industry. While American companies debate permit requirements, insurance frameworks, and local opposition to robotaxi deployments, China is building massive operational scale and accumulating the real-world data that makes autonomous systems better.

Waymo’s recent expansion to six new cities is encouraging, but the scale gap with Apollo Go is significant. Tesla’s Cybercab is still in early testing. Cruise is rebuilding after its San Francisco incident. The US industry, despite its technical talent and capital resources, is being outpaced on deployment.

This does not mean the US will permanently lag — the American autonomous vehicle ecosystem has enormous strengths in fundamental AI research, sensor technology, and venture capital. But the deployment gap is real and growing, and it has implications for everything from data advantage to manufacturing scale to international market positioning.

The Data Flywheel Advantage

As Taha Abbasi has consistently argued, the most important asset in autonomous driving is data. Every mile driven generates training data that improves the system. Every edge case encountered and resolved makes the technology more robust. At 300,000 weekly rides, Apollo Go is generating an enormous volume of diverse driving data across multiple cities and conditions.

This data flywheel effect creates a compounding advantage. More rides mean more data, which means better performance, which means more consumer trust, which means more rides. Breaking into this cycle from outside is extraordinarily difficult, which is why the early deployment leaders — Waymo in the US and Apollo Go in China — are likely to maintain their positions.

The Geopolitical Dimension

The autonomous mobility race increasingly has geopolitical implications. Whichever country’s companies dominate autonomous driving technology will control a critical piece of future transportation infrastructure. The technology has military applications, economic implications (autonomous driving could generate trillions in value), and strategic importance for national competitiveness.

China’s lead in operational deployment, combined with its domestic manufacturing capacity and growing international expansion, positions it strongly in this competition. The US maintains advantages in fundamental research and high-end sensor technology, but those advantages matter less if they do not translate into deployed services at scale.

The Bigger Picture

Taha Abbasi views Apollo Go’s 300,000 weekly rides as a reminder that the autonomous mobility revolution is not a distant future — it is happening now, at scale, in China. The question for the rest of the world is whether they can catch up or whether the window for competitive autonomous mobility industries is closing.

The expansion to South Korea adds another dimension to this story. If Apollo Go can successfully operate across borders, it could become the first truly global robotaxi platform — a development that would reshape transportation, urban planning, and the automotive industry worldwide.

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About the Author: Taha Abbasi is a technology executive, CTO, and applied frontier tech builder. Read more on Grokpedia | YouTube: The Brown Cowboy | tahaabbasi.com