🚲 Mobility

Apollo Go: Fully Driverless Robotaxis in Yongchuan

Yongchuan — a district of Chongqing Municipality about 50km from the downtown core — issued China's first commercial permit for paid robotaxi rides with nobody behind the wheel in August 2022, alongside Wuhan; Baidu's Apollo Go started with 5 cars over 30km². By March 2025 the service had grown to nearly 4,000 pickup points across roughly 130km² of the district, running 9:30am–11pm. The honest counterweight: on 6 August 2025 a Robotaxi drove into an open municipal construction trench on Huandong Road with a passenger inside, who was pulled out by nearby workers and residents; the operator had issued no public statement as of the news coverage.

Live 📅 since 2022

🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below — how this works · 🔎 Last verified 2026-08-02

🚲 Mobility Autonomous vehicles Artificial intelligence Sensors & IoT

📊 Impact

Grew from 5 vehicles over 30km² (Aug 2022) to nearly 4,000 pickup points across ~130km² of Yongchuan district (March 2025); on 6 Aug 2025 a Robotaxi drove into an open construction trench with a passenger aboard, rescued by bystanders — no independent ridership or safety-incident tally beyond press coverage was found.

🎓 Lesson

A driverless permit is not the same as flawless perception: Chongqing's fleet expanded for three years before one drove into an unmarked construction pit with a fare inside.

Evidence📰 Media

Scale🏘️ District

📖 Terms in this entry: Adaptive traffic signals · CBTC (communications-based train control) · Digital twin

Sources

↗ Jiemian — first fully driverless paid robotaxi rides launch in ChongqingAug 2022 launch: 5 vehicles, 30km² zone, 9am-5pm hours, fare structure, trial discounts.

↗ Chongqing Municipal Government — Yongchuan issues China's first fully-unmanned demonstration permitOfficial confirmation of the permit and operator (Baidu Apollo / Robotaxi), Aug 2022.

↗ Sina Finance — Robotaxi drives into a construction trench in Yongchuan, Chongqing6 Aug 2025 incident; also cites ~4,000 stations and 130km² coverage as of March 2025 and 'operating since June 2022'.

This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed above and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.

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Compare this project

🇨🇳 Apollo Go robotaxi pilot — driverless cars with a safety officer still on board · Chengdu Same Baidu Apollo Go fleet, one region over — Chengdu scaled from 8 cars in 2022 too, without Chongqing's construction-trench incident. 🇨🇳 Shenzhen's Autonomous Vehicle Law & Citywide Driverless Robotaxi Permit · Shenzhen Shenzhen's 2022 law gave driverless cars legal cover nationwide; Chongqing's Yongchuan permit and 2025 trench crash test that framework. 🇨🇳 Apollo Go Robotaxi Network · Wuhan Same Apollo Go operator: Wuhan's fleet froze citywide in a cloud outage; Chongqing's drove into an open trench — different failure modes. 🇨🇳 Liangjiang New Area National Connected-Vehicle Pilot Zone · Chongqing Same city, separate programs: this wires roads with V2X sensors; Yongchuan's Apollo Go runs robotaxis under its own permit.

Explore the wider context

🚦 Asphalt or algorithms 🚗 Autonomous vehicles guide 🏙️ Chongqing city profile 🚲 Mobility projects

📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Apollo Go: Fully Driverless Robotaxis in Yongchuan” — Chongqing, China. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/chongqing-apollo-go-robotaxi/ (last verified 2026-08-02). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

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