AutoX is building driverless RoboTaxis into Shenzhen street service

AutoX opened its fully driverless RoboTaxi pilot to the public in Shenzhen on January 27, 2021. AutoX journey material records fully driverless RoboTaxis on downtown Shenzhen roads in 2021.

The company states that the fleet operated without accompanying safety drivers or remote operators. That operating boundary is the core of the story: the public claim is not only autonomous driving, but driverless passenger service in dense urban streets.

AutoX previously described a driverless-ready robotaxi based on the Chrysler Pacifica platform in 2020. The vehicle platform gave the company a minivan form factor for passenger service while the autonomy stack handled urban road driving and regulatory access.

AutoX was founded by Jianxiong Xiao, known as Professor X, after academic work in computer vision and robotics. The company?s early robotaxi push placed it among China and U.S. autonomy programs trying to move from testing to public driverless service.

The competitive field includes Waymo, Baidu Apollo, Pony AI, WeRide, AutoNavi-linked services, Zoox, Cruise?s earlier program, and Tesla?s autonomy effort. AutoX?s distinction in this event is the Shenzhen public driverless claim at a time when many services still used safety drivers or narrower pilots.

Public material does not show paid rides per vehicle, disengagement frequency, route uptime, service response time, city-level customer retention, fare revenue, fleet size by city, current operating status, or commercial behavior metrics. The event remains historically important but does not provide current unit economics.

AutoX?s Shenzhen service tests whether public driverless operation can move robotaxis beyond supervised pilots. If the company converts driverless street operation into sustained rides and economics, the event becomes more than a regulatory milestone; it becomes a template for dense-city autonomy deployment.

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