Apollo Go: Fully Driverless Robotaxis in Yongchuan
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Yongchuan, a Chongqing district, got one of China's first fully driverless robotaxi permits in August 2022 — then in August 2025 one of the cars drove straight into an open construction trench with a passenger inside.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is press reporting; no primary evaluation was located. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 5 more in Chongqing · 🚗 Autonomous vehicles guide · 🚲 Mobility projects
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.
📊 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.
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📎 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.