WeRide Starts Charging Fares on Driverless Buses in Central Guangzhou in Major Step Toward Autonomous Public Transit
Night Riders of Guangzhou: WeRide’s Robobus Begins Charging Ahead in China’s Urban Core
A Fare-Charging Frontier: Inside the First Downtown-Level 4 Robobus Service in One of the World’s Most Complex Cities
A New Contender Rolls Into Rush Hour
At precisely 7:00 PM, as neon strobes dance across the bustling avenues of downtown Guangzhou, a quiet hum pierces the evening gridlock. It's not a traditional bus or a ride-hailing vehicle. It's WeRide’s Level-4 autonomous robobus — now officially charging fares for public passengers in one of China’s densest urban ecosystems.
This is not a test. For the first time in Guangzhou’s central district, a fully driverless, fare-collecting public transport vehicle loops through the city core. While modest in scope — a 13.6 km route, operating two hours each night, carrying up to six passengers per trip — the implications are substantial.
“What we’re seeing is no longer a sandbox experiment. It’s a monetized service, deployed in real-world chaos, during low-visibility hours,” noted one urban transit analyst based in Shenzhen.
Guangzhou’s robobus launch marks a critical turning point for WeRide (Nasdaq: WRD), reflecting the culmination of three years of operational testing and a broader movement toward commercial-scale autonomous mobility.
Between Concrete and Code: The Challenge of Downtown Autonomy
With a population surpassing 18 million and notorious for its labyrinthine traffic flows, Guangzhou’s city center is a crucible for any emerging transport technology. It’s a city where traditional transit models buckle nightly under demand, and human drivers routinely wrestle with split-second decisions amid dense, chaotic intersections.
In this context, WeRide’s Level-4 robobus doesn’t just navigate — it adapts.
The loop, beginning and ending at Meidong Road Terminal in Yuexiu District, connects urban landmarks like Dongjun Plaza, the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, and the Guangdong Building. The 55-minute circuit threads through high-risk zones for AVs: narrow streets, mixed pedestrian and vehicle flows, and inconsistent lighting.
“Autonomous systems that function here — especially at night — are passing one of the most brutal real-world validation tests available,” an anonymous robotics engineer working for a competitor said.
The vehicles rely on WeRide’s “One” platform, integrating sensor fusion, LiDAR, AI-based planning, and remote monitoring. Crucially, they also integrate with Guangzhou’s Yang Cheng Tong payment system and major mobile platforms — a key enabler of frictionless adoption.
The Numbers Behind the Narrative: A High-Stakes Market Shift
The broader context is impossible to ignore: the autonomous bus market is swelling. According to Fortune Business Insights, the self-driving bus segment is expected to grow from $1.73 billion in 2024 to $9.34 billion by 2032, at a compound annual growth rate of 24.6%. And that’s just one slice of the much larger autonomous vehicle sector, which Precedence Research pegs at $273.75 billion in 2025 — on track to balloon past $3.2 trillion by 2033.
From an investor’s perspective, WeRide’s fare-based service opens a new, bankable revenue stream. Analysts speculate that if the company captures just 5% of Guangzhou’s nighttime minibus ridership, the operation could generate over $10 million in incremental revenue annually.
Still, the move is incremental, not groundbreaking. Baidu Apollo secured approval to charge passengers on its robobuses in Chongqing back in 2021, while WeRide itself launched fare-collecting services in Huangpu District of Guangzhou in late 2023. What’s novel is not the act of charging passengers — it’s doing so in the chaotic beating heart of a megacity.
From Guangzhou to Drôme: WeRide’s Global Playbook
Guangzhou is not an isolated theater. In the span of just a few months, WeRide has activated commercial robobus services in France, Switzerland, Singapore, and Japan, often with deep partnerships.
Notably, in February 2025, the company launched the first fully driverless commercial robobus in Europe, via a collaboration with Renault Group, Macif, and French mobility startup beti, in the Drôme region. By March, WeRide and beti had secured France’s first Level-4 driverless permit for public roads.
These deployments reveal WeRide’s underlying strategy: combine localized transit integration (e.g., transit card syncing in China, operator collaborations in Europe) with Level-4 capabilities that meet or exceed regulatory thresholds across multiple jurisdictions.
One transport policy observer based in Paris described it as “regulatory arbitrage with a tech twist — they’re going where permissions meet proof points.”
Competitors Aren’t Standing Still
Baidu Apollo
Baidu’s Apollo Go platform remains a formidable rival. With over 150 million km driven and 10 million rides delivered, Apollo has scaled in volume, particularly in China’s second-tier cities. Its strategic partnership with Dubai’s RTA could also give it an international leg up, especially in high-infrastructure environments.
Navya & EasyMile
In Europe, Navya and EasyMile lead in shuttle deployments. The EZ10 vehicle from both firms has operated in over 300 locations globally. EasyMile, with its EZTow platform for cargo and high-frequency shuttle services, delivered autonomous operations even at the 2024 Paris Olympic test venues.
Yet both companies have focused on controlled environments — corporate campuses, parks, and tourist areas — rather than the raw urban fabric of downtown cities like Guangzhou.
Others
OEMs like Volvo, Toyota, and Mercedes-Benz are steadily entering the arena with small-scale pilots, often focused on luxury or long-haul autonomous buses. Meanwhile, Pony AI is reportedly slashing hardware costs by 70%, positioning itself for broader market entry by mid-2025.
Pressure Points and Strategic Risks
Despite the milestone, headwinds persist.
Regulatory Fragility
As with any AV deployment, one incident — especially involving a pedestrian — could freeze the program. While Chinese regulators have shown support, the tide can turn quickly, especially if public sentiment wavers.
Pricing Pressure
State-backed rivals like Baidu can undercut on fares or bundle services with broader mobility packages, squeezing WeRide’s margins in price-sensitive markets.
Capital Intensity
Autonomous bus fleets are expensive to deploy and maintain. Break-even timelines hinge on multi-year contracts with city governments or transit authorities. The CapEx reality could become a drag on WRD’s stock if monetization lags scaling.
“The financial math of autonomy is brutal — especially in public transit where subsidies, not profits, often drive the market,” one mobility VC remarked.
The Bigger Picture: Last-Mile Wars and Global Urbanization
Globally, cities are confronting overlapping crises — rising congestion, driver shortages, and aging transit infrastructure. Robobuses offer a promising tool to address the “last-mile” problem, particularly during off-peak hours when service gaps are most pronounced.
Guangzhou’s pilot is more than a tech showcase — it’s a template.
“When you can drop a six-seat, autonomous minibus into one of the most snarled city grids on earth and have it run nightly with paying customers — that’s not just engineering. That’s urban transformation,” a policy researcher from a global transport think tank concluded.
The Future Rolls Quietly Into the Night
WeRide’s robobus in Guangzhou isn’t flashy. It doesn’t promise flying cars or Jetsons-style utopia. But in its modest loop — 13.6 kilometers, two hours a night — it crystallizes the convergence of software, policy, urbanism, and economics.
The era of commercially viable, Level-4 public transit isn’t on the horizon. It’s already boarding passengers.