Robotaxis are on the brink of becoming mainstream, the Baidu CEO Robin Li said.
The Chinese tech firm is among the world’s leaders in deploying autonomous vehicles; the bosses of tech giants Nvidia and Xpeng also recently expressed optimism about self-driving cars.
Despite Western media focus on advancements by US firms Waymo and Tesla, the industry has expanded faster in China, with three Chinese companies signing partnerships with Uber. And the British government recently bet heavily on its homegrown self-driving firm Wayve, which a tech writer said had the potential to challenge the big players. McKinsey projects the autonomous driving market could be worth up to $400 billion by 2035.