Super cheap robotaxi rides spark widespread anxiety in China
CNN
In China, it’s possible to travel six miles in a driverless taxi for just about 50 cents.
In China, it’s possible to travel six miles in a driverless taxi for just about 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 where the first major outbreak of Covid-19 emerged in 2020. 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.
Nippon Steel is expected to re-file its application for a national security review by American regulators of its $15 billion takeover bid of US Steel, sources familiar with the matter told CNN on Tuesday, buying Japan’s largest steelmaker an additional 90 days to close its acquisition of an American rival after political opposition emerged in an election year.
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