On Friday, the U.S. stock market staged a dramatic annual reversal of fortunes. On one side, Tesla closed down nearly 9%, wiping out nearly tens of billions of market value. On the other side, Uber closed up nearly 11%, hitting a historical high, Lyft surged over 9%, and Google and Baidu, which have been operating Waymo and萝卜快跑 for years, did not reap any benefits either, with Google edging up by 0.72% and Baidu closing down by 0.26%.

It is well known that the "trigger" for this grand drama was Musk's "We, Robot" press conference and his Robotaxi.

Musk, who was advocating just two days ago that this would be "recorded in history," probably did not anticipate such a market reaction. However, the significant drop in Tesla's stock price was something many had anticipated. This is because the anticipated black technology did not make its expected appearance; safety and technical details were merely glossed over, mass production is still a year away, and commercialization is far from imminent.

Everything seems like a "promissory note."

In this way, from proposing autonomous driving to releasing the Cybercab, Tesla's greatest contribution appears to have been successfully instilling the concept of the commercial feasibility of autonomous driving to consumers worldwide.

Advertisement

The "fruits of victory" from this press conference were ultimately reaped by Uber, with Baidu, one of the top three autonomous driving giants, unfortunately being caught in the crossfire.

Has Tesla shifted from being a "threat" to an "assist" for Uber, who is now "reaping the benefits"?

Originally, Tesla's Robotaxi concept was seen as a significant threat to Uber, but the final outcome seems to be the exact opposite.

Ultimately, this is because Tesla is still a long way from achieving commercialization. In contrast, Uber has a clear landing scenario and is a step ahead in commercial application.

Moreover, the existence and development of autonomous driving will most likely expand the available market size for Uber's ride-hailing services. After all, an increase in shared mobility vehicles means an increase in supply, which will directly drive down the operating costs of autonomous vehicles and ultimately expand the application scenarios for shared mobility.Intuitively, Uber is the biggest beneficiary because it is the world's largest ride-sharing company.

In contrast, although Tesla is committed to independently developing its Robotaxi fleet without collaborating with existing ride-sharing platforms, Tesla may have underestimated the difficulty and obstacles of expanding its own fleet. In the ride-sharing market, achieving scale without demand channels provided by Uber or Lyft is no easy task.

Therefore, returning to the original question, it seems that autonomous driving developers should opt for cooperation with ride-sharing platforms rather than operating fleets independently.

Moreover, Uber has unique advantages in the ride-sharing domain, such as helping autonomous driving developers achieve sustainable growth by optimizing logistics, providing fleet management experience, and dealing with local regulations.

In this way, Uber has already established an unbeatable position in the long river of autonomous driving development. If fully autonomous driving becomes a reality, Uber, as the largest ride-sharing company, can fully realize the positive incentive effects brought by technological progress. Even if autonomous driving technology stagnates in the short term, Uber can still explore breakthroughs with autonomous driving developers as a partner.

In September of this year, Uber and Google's autonomous driving company Waymo jointly announced that they will jointly launch autonomous driving cars in Austin and Atlanta, two major cities in the United States, by early 2025. Uber will manage Waymo's autonomous driving fleet, including providing vehicle cleaning and maintenance; while Waymo will continue to be responsible for the testing and operation of autonomous driving vehicles.

From two aspects, this cooperation not only heralds a significant change in the ride-hailing industry but also marks a major step towards the commercialization of autonomous driving technology. Moreover, on the day the news was announced, Uber's stock price soared by 6.45%.

Overall, this time, Uber was able to unexpectedly pick the "fruit" because when the market expected a real breakthrough in autonomous driving, the "answerer" still only provided a vague answer, and behind this vague answer, there is an additional condition - ride-sharing.

Google, Baidu "calm", what are the new considerations in the market?

Compared to Tesla's sharp decline and Uber's sharp rise, Google and Baidu, one slightly rose and the other slightly fell. In this "calm" situation, there is both good news and bad news hidden.The most evident is that Google and Baidu have taken a step ahead of Tesla in the commercialization of autonomous driving.

Taking the domestic RoboTaxi as an example, Baidu's sixth-generation RoboTaxi released in 2022 is already in a form without a steering wheel and accelerator, leading Tesla by two years in the birth of the autonomous driving prototype car. Moreover, the price of Baidu's sixth-generation RoboTaxi, Yi Chi 06, is only 204,600 yuan, compared to Cybercab's $30,000. In terms of manufacturing costs, RoboTaxi also has an advantage.

In May of this year, at the ApolloDay conference, Baidu released the world's first large model ADFM (Autonomous Driving Foundation Model) that supports L4-level autonomous driving. According to official introductions, the model can balance the safety and generalization of technology, achieving safety more than 10 times higher than human drivers.

However, it is worth noting that there are hundreds of control personnel behind the scenes of the autonomous driving of RoboTaxi. Although the vast majority of vehicles operate in autonomous driving mode, when events that may be judged as threats to operational safety occur, the vehicle will be handed over to manual control.

This means that RoboTaxi's autonomous driving has not been able to fully complete the 100% progress bar, and the safety issues of autonomous driving that the public is highly concerned about remain unresolved.

In addition, Baidu, which comes from the internet, is neither an automobile manufacturer nor a car production manufacturer with Tesla's mature process of producing 6 million cars, nor is it a shared travel service provider with a large platform like Uber and a large amount of travel data for support.

Moreover, according to the data released by the Wuhan Transportation Bureau in May this year, there are currently only more than 400 RoboTaxi vehicles operating in Wuhan, and Wuhan has an average of 29,400 online car-hailing vehicles operating per day. Adding to the roaming taxis, RoboTaxi's share is less than 1%.

At this time, what is in front of Baidu is that although RoboTaxi has taken a step ahead in the application of commercialization, it is still early to form a scale advantage, and how to solve the safety issues of autonomous driving is still a big problem.

Therefore, in this global race for shared travel services as the result-oriented autonomous driving, Baidu, which lacks production and manufacturing experience and platform operation experience, can go how far with its current advantages is still unknown.

This time, benefiting from the faster progress of autonomous driving commercialization, Baidu did not fall in sync with Tesla on the day of the Tesla conference, with a slight drop of less than 1%, showing a relatively strong performance. However, as the leader of domestic autonomous driving, Baidu bears a heavy responsibility and is in a situation of "fighting against many", which is inevitable to attract more doubts and bear higher expectations.China-US Competition in Autonomous Driving: Action Speaks Louder than "Eloquent Speech"

However, industrial competition has always been ruthless.

Judging from the attention Tesla's Robotaxi has received, the public's expectation for autonomous driving is unprecedented. Tesla is not the only one wanting to take a leading position; autonomous driving companies worldwide are advancing at a rapid pace, especially represented by China and the United States, which have engaged in fierce direct competition.

On October 2nd, Waymo, a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet, announced that it would soon open its autonomous taxi service to the public in Austin, Texas. On October 9th, Baidu announced that it is planning to launch its autonomous taxi service ApolloGo (also known as Luobo Kuai Pao) outside of China. The three giants gathered at the beginning of this October to send a signal.

Not only that, WeRide has also carried out autonomous driving research and development, testing, and operations worldwide. As of April 2024, the accumulated autonomous driving mileage has exceeded 25 million kilometers. Pony.ai's Robotaxi service has also accumulated more than 36 million kilometers of autonomous driving road test mileage and 4 million kilometers of unmanned test mileage.

As everyone knows, the end goal of autonomous driving is to solve safety issues and successfully apply it. Nowadays, in China, those who have started to take off are not only Baidu's Luobo Kuai Pao but also WeRide and Pony.ai, which are already leading in quantity.

It is particularly worth noting that, based on the estimated price of 204,600 yuan for Luobo Kuai Pao, its expected usage period is 5 years. After allocating the costs of wear and tear, maintenance, and other expenses, the estimated daily usage cost per car is about 300 yuan. Luobo Kuai Pao can exceed 20 orders per day at its peak, with an average customer price between 15-25 yuan, and the daily income accumulates to 300 to 500 yuan, which has basically achieved profitability at the usage level.

This signal is undoubtedly a new favorable evidence for the feasibility of commercialization. According to the data analysis of Frost & Sullivan, when the cost per kilometer of Robotaxi begins to be lower than that of human-powered ride-hailing services, Robotaxi will enter a true popularization period, and this time node is expected to appear in 2026.

At the same time, Tesla's Cybercab has just started production. Intuitively, the gap between the two sides in terms of commercialization will further widen.

Moreover, domestic autonomous driving companies are still seizing the time window to further capture the overseas market. Currently, WeRide's autonomous taxis have been driving on the streets of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Pony.ai has also signed a memorandum of cooperation with ComfortDelGro, a Singaporean taxi operator.In terms of cooperation models, there is both the export of autonomous driving technology and products overseas, including the deployment of autonomous taxi fleets and services, as well as the provision of customized autonomous driving solutions for local markets and users.

Compared to Tesla's prototype vehicles just coming off the assembly line and technology demonstrations that remain on paper, domestic companies are clearly more like "doers," hitting the road first and discussing other matters later, with technological progress gradually accumulated through practice.

This October, the competition between China and the United States in autonomous driving has opened up new perspectives for the market. As the two countries with the most autonomous driving companies globally, whoever can first achieve a commercial closed loop and successfully build a complete industry chain will have the initiative to define the track. The daring and action-oriented nature of domestic companies is undoubtedly a prerequisite for winning this competition.