Baidu's robotaxi service, Apollo Go, has recently surpassed 250,000 fully driverless ride orders each week as of October 31. This figure matches what Waymo reported for its weekly rides in the U.S. earlier this year. Waymo, backed by Alphabet, operates in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, and has partnerships with Uber in Austin and Atlanta. The competition between Baidu and U.S. companies in autonomous driving and advanced technology is intensifying. Baidu’s Apollo Go has been expanding its reach, currently operating in major Chinese cities such as Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and is also entering markets in Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Switzerland. The service has recorded a total of 17 million ride orders and has driven 240 million kilometers, with 140 million of those rides being fully driverless. The safety record is notable, with only one airbag deployment incident for every 10.1 million kilometers driven, and no major accidents involving human injuries or fatalities reported. Details on how long Apollo Go has maintained the 250,000 weekly rides aren’t clear; previously, the service averaged about 169,000 rides a week for the quarter ending June 30. Baidu is set to release its quarterly results on November 18 and will hold an annual tech conference in Beijing on November 13. Meanwhile, data from competitors Pony.ai and WeRide has not been made available, and Waymo has not provided updated figures since April.