Can Carrot Run bring Baidu to a sprint?

No one expected that the first market for large-scale commercial driverless taxis to be put into operation was not Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou or Shenzhen, but Wuhan.

The specific reason is that according to media reports, the number of orders for "Carrot Run" in Wuhan City has experienced explosive growth, with a peak of more than 20 orders per day, reaching the average daily order volume of traditional taxi drivers.

After the explosion of orders, topics such as "Carrot Run" and "driverless taxis" have attracted widespread attention. At the same time, Baidu behind the scenes has also been pushed to the forefront, driving the stock price to rise rapidly.

During the trading session on July 12, Baidu Groups stock price was HK$99.75, up 2.62%, with a total market value of approximately HK$289.526 billion. It is worth mentioning that its stock price has risen for two consecutive days. On July 10, Baidu once rose by more than 12% during the trading session, with a maximum of HK$97.15 per share, the highest point in the past month.

At the same time, funds also competed for the concept of driverless driving in A-shares. On the same day, online car-hailing and driverless sectors in the market rose sharply, which in turn led to the rise of various "car" related sectors.

In fact, Carrot Run is not only a fresh gimmick of driverless driving. During the trial, "Carrot Run" has achieved remarkable results.

Although the complaints about Carrot Run from the driving experience are mainly focused on slow driving and being too conservative, Wuhan citizens even directly call Carrot Run "苕罗苕" (苕: silly, simple, Wuhan dialect).

Frankly speaking, it is difficult to be a bad review. After all, in Wuhan, where jokes such as "The Legend of the Fastest Bus" and "I found that the ruler became shorter when I took the bus" are circulated, Carrot Run has even become a "traffic punishment" - only punishing those who do not abide by traffic rules.

In terms of comprehensive evaluation, most citizens are very satisfied with the travel service of taking a fully driverless car (the user satisfaction rating of Carrot Run APP is 4.9 points, of which 94.19% of the full score is 5 points). First, the price is very cheap. The fare for 10 kilometers is only about half of the fare of an ordinary taxi. Second, it operates 24 hours a day, so there is no need to worry about not being able to get a taxi. The riding experience is better, there is no refusal to take passengers, detours, and no disputes.

With rave reviews, the cumulative order volume of Turnip Run has exceeded 6 million, so that Turnip Runs profit expectations are much ahead of market expectations.

In May this year, Baidu officially announced at Apollo Day that Turnip Run expects Wuhan to achieve revenue balance by the end of 2024 and enter a full profit period by 2025.

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2024, Turnip Run announced that it will achieve a plan of "full coverage" in Wuhan this year, and invest 1,000 new-generation mass-produced unmanned vehicles to achieve 7x24 hours of fully unmanned operation in Wuhan.