Asia Tech Wire (Oct 11) -- Mixed operations are an effective path for robotaxi commercialization, a Chinese executive said.

With Tesla's release of Cybercab, robotaxi commercialization has once again become one of the industry's focuses of attention.

As one of the biggest application scenarios for self-driving technology, robotaxi services are starting to land in more and more regions.

Sun Lei, vice president of Ruqi Mobility, a ride-hailing platform owned by Chinese state-owned automaker GAC Group, said at an event on Thursday that the commercialization of robotaxi is still facing five major challenges, namely regulation, technology, cost, service and market.

And there is an underlying logic of the "impossible triangle" of safety, ODD (operational design domain) and economics, which means that it is currently difficult for a single robotaxi service to achieve the three goals of sufficient safety, large enough operating area and high enough economics at the same time, he added.

Sun believes that the three goals can be optimally balanced in the robotaxi commercialization process through the hybrid operation of human-driven car and robotaxi, i.e., managing risks during the development process, developing and applying the technology on the bottom line of the risks, and ultimately realizing the comprehensive surpassing and accelerated replacement of human-driven car through dynamic development.

He said, "Mixed operations are an effective path for robotaxi to land at scale."

Ruqi Mobility launched its open robotaxi operating platform in 2022 and has already provided robotaxi services in two key Chinese cities, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

(Reporting by Rock Chen; Editing by Vincy Lu)