In Wuhan, driverless taxis offer a peek into the future of intracity transport in China

The city of Wuhan, on the banks of China’s Yangtze River, gained global notoriety in December 2019 as the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak. Now the capital of central Hubei province is attracting attention for another reason: its aggressive roll-out of a robotaxi fleet that has local taxi drivers worried about job losses.

While cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen have moved cautiously when it comes to driverless cars for safety reasons, few have gone as far as Wuhan, a city of 13.7 million, that has allowed a fleet of nearly 500 driverless taxis to operate on 35 per cent of the road network. Wuhan is in a race with cities like San Francisco, where Alphabet-owned Waymo recently opened its service to all residents, to become a pioneer of the technology.

While the fleet size in Wuhan is still tiny compared to the city’s 18,000 licensed taxis, let alone the tens of thousands of Uber-style service cars, the robotaxis have become the subject of nationwide attention, offering a glimpse into how autonomous urban transport could disrupt the existing traffic environment and put people out of work.

A Wuhan taxi driver surnamed Liu told the Post that robotaxis were “dumb” compared with human drivers, as they increase traffic congestion. “I saw [one robotaxi] stop moving when doing a U-turn, as it needed to reverse, but a line of cars was close behind it,” Liu said. “[Human drivers] have the ability to predict the movement of objects moving on the road,” he said.

Operating under the brand name Apollo Go, the largest Wuhan fleet is owned by Chinese search engine giant Baidu, which has invested heavily in autonomous vehicles in recent years. Other companies like Dongfeng Motor Corp and DeepBlue Technology have also been testing their autonomous taxis and shuttles in the city.