Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
This may well end up being the year of the robotaxi. Several companies are trying to scale up robotaxi service significantly after early testing and initial rollout. You can count Chinese auto giant Geely and self-driving partner WeRide in that group.
Geely Holding Group brand Farizon and WeRide announced today that they expect to deliver 2,000 Robotaxi GXR vehicles, recently upgraded, this year. Production is supposed to being in the 3rd quarter.
This would be the bulk of WeRide’s business so far, with about 600 of its robotaxis elsewhere.
“The upgraded GXR is equipped with WeRide’s GEN8 autonomous driving suite, built around the Sensor Suite 8.0 platform,” China Daily writes. “The system includes a thousand-line lidar capable of detecting objects as far as 600 meters—two to three times the range of many mainstream solutions—allowing earlier hazard recognition and more time for safety decisions in high-speed scenarios.”
But here’s a real kicker: Farizon is planning to get the vehicle assembly time down from one hour to 10 minutes! This is part of an aim to cut vehicle cost by about 15%.
WeRide has robotaxis running in Abu Dhabi, in Singapore, in Saudi Arabia, and in Dubai. Additionally, Uber & WeRide plan to partner in at least 15 cities in the coming few years.
Sign up for CleanTechnica’s Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott’s in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica’s Comment Policy