A Taxi With NO Driver? China's XPENG YOYO Robotaxi Is Here
China's driverless taxi race just took a big step forward. On 8 October 2026, XPENG officially named its robotaxi service "XPENG YOYO" and opened public registration in China through invitation codes — moving the project from internal testing into real-world commercial operations. According to XPENG, YOYO is China's first fully in-house developed robotaxi to reach pre-loaded mass production. Instead of converting an existing taxi, the vehicle is built from the start as a robotaxi, based on the company's flagship GX SUV. The technology underneath is striking. The car runs on four of XPENG's own Turing AI chips, which the company says deliver 3,000 TOPS of effective computing power. Its second-generation VLA 2.0 system relies on cameras alone — no LiDAR and no high-definition maps — and is designed for Level 4 autonomous driving, where the system handles the driving task itself within defined conditions. This is not just a concept. XPENG says its employees h...