Baidu’s Autonomous Driving: Paving the Way into the Commercial ‘Endurance Race

Recently, the market has grown somewhat pessimistic about autonomous driving companies going public. The Fed’s interest-rate hikes and a global economic downturn have decimated valuations of U.S. tech stocks, and several autonomous driving firms’ IPOs have been met with market skepticism. History shows that truth is often held in the hands of a few. What, really, is the future of autonomous driving? Has the market value already peaked? Without investigation, you can’t make a true judgment.In probing this question, we observed that Baidu is a particularly worthy case study. Baidu has invested for years in AI, and autonomous driving—being perhaps the largest real-world application of AI—is also a key new business priority for Baidu. Observers outside are quite interested in its commercialization progress. Therefore, it’s worth peering into Baidu’s latest financial report for hints.On November 22, Baidu released its latest earnings. The data show that in the third quarter, Baidu achieved RMB 32.5 billion in revenue, and its net profit attributable to Baidu reached RMB 5.89 billion, a year‐on‐year increase of 16%. Judging from the core figures, Baidu’s revenue, profit scale, and growth are all solid. But what draws even more attention is its autonomous driving business’s commercialization.Autonomous driving is like a “Le Mans 24-Hour Endurance Race”: speed is important, but stability is more crucial.

In an endurance race, many drop out, but those who finish are often the strongest. The earnings report shows that in Q3, for the autonomous driving business, Apollo’s automotive intelligentization solutions recently accumulated contracted and signed amounts estimated at RMB 11.4 billion, with scale continuing to grow. From these changes in the earnings report, Baidu’s autonomous driving is entering a new stage of commercial growth.Baidu’s “Fourth Competitiveness” in Autonomous Driving Commercialization.AI is Baidu’s new growth engine. After intelligent cloud, autonomous driving is now rushing to the frontlines of commercialization. In the financials, Baidu’s commercialization thread in autonomous driving is clear: gradually forming a virtuous cycle of brand + technology.In the ASD (Autonomous Systems Development) segment, the signed amount further grew to RMB 11.4 billion, indicating that Baidu’s ASD commercialization is steadily advancing. On one hand, the brand + L4 technical capabilities are strengthening and the scale of cooperation with automakers is expanding. On the other hand, as new car deliveries land, the brand influence and technical capability are further accumulating. These accumulations in turn feed back into and accelerate further commercialization.In Q3, Baidu deepened cooperation with one of China’s largest automotive-technology firms. On one of its popular models, they will deploy ANP (Apollo Navigation Pilot Assist), AVP (Autonomous Valet Parking), and high-precision mapping. As mass-production vehicles come to market, the ASD business may reach another new tier of growth.Mobility Service Business.

According to the earnings, Luobo Kuaipao (Baidu’s ride service) in Q3 handled over 474,000 orders, a year-on-year growth of 311% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 65%, with cumulative orders exceeding 1.4 million. In Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other first-tier cities, each vehicle in these areas averages more than 15 orders per day.Looking further, the growth in scale means that large-scale operation of Luobo Kuaipao is being validated. The next step is really to push L4 capability iteration and improve operational efficiency. On the one hand, by maintaining continuous safety records to support policy opening, scale growth can accelerate; on the other hand, once the profit model is validated, commercialization outcomes will gradually reflect in cash flow.The B2B ASD Market Is Still Growing—and Baidu Has Found the Core Support Point for Autonomous Driving Commercialization.The B-end (business) ASD market is still expanding. This not only means the business direction for autonomous driving is being validated, but more importantly, Baidu has found the core supporting point in this commercialization process.That support point is that Baidu’s ASD capability becomes the “fourth competitiveness” for vehicle products.Firstly, market demand is rising. From the growth of Baidu’s ASD business, it’s not simply B2B sales driving it—there is a deep market driver behind it.

That driver is that enterprises are beginning to realize that, beyond the traditional “three big components” (engine, transmission, chassis), more and more consumers are willing to pay for autonomous driving. Automakers buying in is ultimately rooted in consumer willingness. Consumer recognition is the foundation for monetizing new technologies. Why do intelligent cars (with autonomous features) attract more consumer attention than conventional fuel vehicles? Because a portion of consumers are voting with their feet. Intelligent cars centered on autonomous driving are gradually taking the center stage of car sales.This leads to an important shift: from the underlying business logic, the commercialization prospects of autonomous driving become clear. Baidu’s ASD business data in its earnings is a partial verification of this shift.Secondly, a new mobility business with autonomous driving at its core is coming into shape. The value of new technology lies in enabling new businesses. Under a complete profit model, Luobo Kuaipao’s commercialization is further scaling out. The growth in Luobo Kuaipao’s data means that commercialization of autonomous driving services is quickly forming scale; the commercial landing of scale is continually being validated.

Just like how early ride-hailing was tested in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities, order growth for Luobo Kuaipao in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou indicates that under a fully formed profit model, large-scale commercialization is only a matter of time.In the mobility domain, autonomous driving commercialization is bidirectional. From the commercialization side, the more mature the technology, the smoother the commercialization; from the technical side, the larger the commercialization scale, the faster the technical progress. Growth in Luobo Kuaipao suggests that large-scale operation is pushing tech iteration; continuous safety records support policy opening and accelerate scale growth. Conversely, the stronger the technical capabilities, the more they promote real-world deployment; the larger the deployed scale, the more refined the technology becomes—thus forming a positive flywheel of technology, business, and scale.Autonomous Driving Accelerates Stratification; the Industry Enters the “Endurance Race” StageThe 20th CPC Report emphasizes: “We must persist in science and technology being the primary productive force, talent being the primary resource, innovation being the primary driving force,” and calls to “open up new fields and new tracks for development, continually shape new momentum and new advantages.”

Compared with other domains, autonomous driving’s feature of boosting productivity through technology is especially evident. The autonomous driving track is not an ordinary business track—it is a strategic track. Furthermore, the rise or fall of autonomous driving implicates the fortunes of several sub-tracks: chips, sensors, vehicle manufacturing, AI algorithms, vehicle-road collaboration, etc. These tracks carry strategic meaning for intelligent industry and smart economy as a whole.A “good track” doesn’t imply that all contestants are excellent. The autonomous driving track will undergo a process of screening. After the tide recedes, the most embarrassed won’t be those who dived deep (i.e. those who invested heavily) but those who “swam naked” (i.e. lacked resilience). From the hype that blew up to valuations that crashed, from a mad rush to selective survival, this is in fact the industry gradually moving toward health and maturity.For autonomous driving itself, sustainability in commercial deployment is far more important than speed. A critical judgment is that the autonomous driving industry is entering the endurance race phase. Just as in the Le Mans race, due to differences in vehicle competitiveness, different classes of cars compete within and across traffic flows, gradually stratifying. Autonomous driving commercialization is similarly a dynamic process of stratification. Survival of the fittest is a key rule of dynamic stratification.Firstly, stratification in technical focus. AI commercialization is hard, and autonomous driving commercialization is equally challenging.

Over these past years, what the capital markets have watched most is deployment. Some L4 autonomous driving companies shift to telling L2 commercialization stories—it’s nothing more than a bid to survive by sounding practical. But after talking commercialization for a long time, true changes often don’t arrive. The core reason lies in where the driving power comes from: transitioning from pushing commercialization via the secondary market to pushing it through consumer markets. For instance, although many firms do autonomous driving, the situation for a head-tech company like Baidu is entirely different from a pure autonomous driving startup. Big tech players like Baidu do not have to chase commercialization figures in the short term; their technical path and strategic direction can remain steadier and more competitive.Secondly, stratification in commercial deployment. Leading companies’ commercialization levels stratify more clearly. Startups must choose a path, but leading enterprises can multi-task. Take Baidu as an example: it deploys commercialization across the three dimensions of vehicle, road, and mobility (travel):Building cars and empowering traditional automakers — two legs for ASD commercialization. For Baidu, entering car manufacturing is a strong card, but it’s not enough to go solo; combining OEM empowerment + in-house manufacturing gives two legs to commercialization, making the commercial landing more robust.

The steadier the commercialization, the stronger Baidu’s confidence as a leading autonomous driving player — and the more sustainable its future growth.ACE Intelligent Transportation continues advancement, shaping a smart-traffic macro layout to preemptively lay groundwork for future commercialization. Autonomous driving commercialization is a system engineering problem, tightly intertwined with smart traffic. Earnings data shows that Baidu’s ACE intelligent-traffic solutions have already been adopted by 63 cities, up from 24 cities a year ago.Scaling Luobo Kuaipao via autonomous driving, further building real-world mass commercialization scenarios. To win the endurance race, the most critical thing is to have self-“recharge” capability. For autonomous driving, that means generating cash flow through commercialization. Further scaling of Luobo Kuaipao gives external observers confidence that autonomous driving large-scale monetization is being validated. Commercialization across these three routes means Baidu’s autonomous driving is entering a new, more stable growth stage, continuously building capability for sustained real-world deployment.Stratification also shows up in the secondary market: valuations of startup companies retract, while the value of leading autonomous driving firms like Baidu is being “compressed in.”

For top tech companies, the advancement of autonomous driving and commercialization pace are not very affected by secondary-market valuation swings. In other words, even if concept stock valuations are slashed, after consumer validation, the fundamentals of leading autonomous driving enterprises are hard to shake. In the secondary market, the process of track valuation retraction is actually a process of locking in the value of the leading firms. It’s like baijiu: no matter how much valuations fall, the share price of Maotai is barely impacted, because the market knows there is only one Maotai. The same applies to AI, autonomous driving, and similar tracks.From this perspective, although secondary-market valuations have recently fluctuated, the value of the autonomous driving track is far from peaking. The forthcoming commercialization progress will further release the growth potential of this track. In fact, the momentum revealed in Baidu’s financials is a favorable signal for the entire autonomous driving industry: the path of value growth in this field is far from finished—it is precisely at the beginning, and the upward road ahead remains long.ConclusionAutonomous driving is a high-tech, high-barrier industry. The value in such industries is anchored not only in the consumer market but also in the firm’s own scarcity. As long as you can maintain technological advantage, the scarcity of leading tech firms will persist—this won’t change with business cycles or market fluctuations. After market volatility, selective survival seems inevitable: those who “swim naked” may sink, but players with real accumulation will continue to grow. As for how such growth will reshape the industry—that is worth watching.