Reconfiguring automated mobility: lived experiences of robotaxi travel in China

China is one of the most advanced real-world contexts for robotaxi deployment. This study examines how Chinese people experience Luobo Kuaipao, a large-scale robotaxi service in Wuhan. Drawing on social media data, field observations, and in-depth interviews, we use reflexive thematic analysis to explore how robotaxis are incorporated into everyday urban movement. The findings show that robotaxis reconfigure the social organisation of the journey. First, they reshape relational mobility by reducing unwanted co-presence, communicative strain, and gendered vulnerability in the taxi cabin, while also making travel less negotiable as interpersonal flexibility is replaced by procedural rigidity. Second, they generate a conditional form of trust: users often perceive robotaxis as more neutral, rule-bound, and predictable than human-driven taxis, but this trust remains situational and depends on specific mobility contexts. Third, robotaxis become normalised through selective incorporation into a broader urban mobility ecology, where their value depends on novelty, waiting tolerance, and route logic. Overall, robotaxis redistribute mobility frictions by easing some burdens of human-driven travel while introducing new constraints on flexibility, access, and control. The study advances automated mobility research by situating robotaxis within Chinese people’s platformised urban everyday life.