Recently, domestic media learned from the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Wuhan) Testing Demonstration Zone that in 2023, the Wuhan demonstration zone had nearly 500 regularly operated autonomous vehicles, including autonomous taxis and unmanned buses. The annual service orders for autonomous driving reached 732,000, serving 900,000 people, establishing itself as the world's largest autonomous driving operations service area.
In December 2023, the Wuhan demonstration zone recorded 121,000 autonomous driving service orders. Following the breakthrough of 100,000 orders for the first time in November, it experienced substantial growth once again. The test mileage in December exceeded 2 million kilometers for the first time, reaching 2.1337 million kilometers, with an additional test duration of 181,500 hours. By the end of 2023, the Wuhan demonstration zone had 491 regularly operated autonomous vehicles, with over 90% of them operating in the Wuhan Economic Development Zone and Dongxihu District.
In 2023, Wuhan significantly expanded the scope of intelligent connected vehicle open test roads. By the end of 2023, the accumulated open test road mileage had surpassed 3,378.73 kilometers (one-way mileage), covering all 12 administrative districts of Wuhan, with a radiation area of approximately 3,000 square kilometers and reaching a population of over 7.7 million. In terms of core data such as the number of regularly operated autonomous driving service vehicles, order volume, open road mileage, and area, Wuhan has become the world's largest autonomous driving operations service area, according to officials from the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Wuhan) Testing Demonstration Zone.
It is worth noting that China and the United States are leading nations in autonomous driving service. Waymo, as the largest autonomous driving service provider in the United States, operates as a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google's parent company). Currently, Waymo mainly conducts autonomous driving services in Phoenix and San Francisco, with Los Angeles and Austin as newly opened operational cities.
Phoenix, located in Arizona, serves as Waymo's operational center in the United States. It has opened an autonomous driving service area covering 225 square miles (approximately 523 square kilometers), making it Waymo's largest autonomous driving operations service area. In San Francisco, California, Waymo has deployed around 250 Robotaxi vehicles (fully autonomous taxis). According to data released on Waymo's official Twitter account, as of November 30, 2023, Waymo had fulfilled over 700,000 service orders.
