AutoX Inc. has announced that its robotic taxicab fleet has grown to more than 1,000 autonomous vehicles. The Shenzhen, China-based company claimed that it has the largest robotaxi fleet in China. It has also opened a new robotaxi operations center in San Francisco.
Dr. Jianxiong Xiao (a.k.a. “Professor X”), a self-driving technologist from MIT and Princeton, founded AutoX in 2016. The company said its self-driving platform is capable of navigating the most challenging and dynamic traffic scenarios in cities around the world. It has 10 operations centers, five research and development centers, and more than 1,000 technical team members worldwide.
In July 2021, AutoX’s newest Gen5 system-equipped RoboTaxis started rolling off the production line. Last month, the company offered a look inside its dedicated factory near Shanghai, which it said is the first of its kind in China (see below). Since starting production, the RoboTaxi line has been in full operation, said AutoX.
RoboTaxis spread across China
AutoX said it has the mission of “democratizing autonomy” with the best user experience. It added that it has the largest SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicle fleet in China. It added that it is the first and currently only company operating a robotaxi service on public roads in China without safety drivers. AutoX's RoboTaxis are operating in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and other cities.
“Reaching the 1,000 autonomous vehicles milestone is a groundbreaking moment for AutoX and the robotaxi industry, as the largest fleets were previously only in the hundreds,” said the company. “Scaling ... represents a significant leap forward for larger-scale commercialization.”
“Scaling the RoboTaxi fleet to over 1,000 vehicles enables AutoX to serve large urban areas with just a few minutes of waiting time for available RoboTaxis, making sure that users are offered the best possible user experience for their journey,” the company said.
In Shenzhen, AutoX operates four operations centers across a service area of more than 386 sq. mi. (1,000 sq. km). Within this area, RoboTaxis can drive without an accompanying human safety driver in a 65-sq.-mi. (168-sq.-km) zone. AutoX is rapidly expanding the sizes of both the autonomous and fully driverless zones.
AutoX adds U.S. operations center
AutoX said it is the second company (after Waymo) to obtain permission from the California Department of Motor Vehicles for completely driverless robotaxis. The company said its new operations center in San Francisco will further expand its testing capacity in the city.
RoboTaxi operations centers are purpose-built facilities for supporting the daily operations of large fleets of autonomous vehicles and large-scale data collection from them.
The autonomous vehicles have been trained with many years of on-road driving and learning in China's megacities of Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beijing, said AutoX. The company added its vehicles will use that experience in San Francisco, one of the densest urban centers in the U.S. It has been testing RoboTaxis in greater San Jose since 2016.
“We want to deploy the AutoX RoboTaxi fleet in many cities to serve hundreds of millions of people, as well to improve and become a part of communities around the world,” said Xiao. “Cities such as San Francisco, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing are the launchpads for RoboTaxis to transform people’s daily lives. And that’s just the beginning.”
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