This is a major breakthrough in the self-driving car ecosystem. The company Baidu, known for its search engine, announced on August 8 that it had succeeded in obtaining a permit allowing it to circulate its taxis without human supervision in two Chinese cities: Wuhan and Chongqing. The firm thus takes a step ahead of its competitors, notes the economic newspaper Financial Times.
The company plans to deploy its autonomous Apollo Go model, without a security controller on board. “In my opinion, it will take another two or three years before the model is profitable enough to be marketed”, According to Charlie Chai, an autonomous driving analyst interviewed by the financial daily, who adds that Baidu is getting ahead of the level of full-scale tests of its fleet.
In fact, the service will initially be strictly regulated with specific schedules. It will be available in Wuhan City from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and in Chongqing Municipality (southwest of the country) from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Five robot taxis will be deployed in each city from Monday August 15 and will cover a reduced perimeter: 13 km² in Wuhan and 30 km² in Chongqing, the company said.
Economic bet
Last April, Baidu received permission to run its vehicles with a human controller in the passenger seat, during tests carried out in Beijing.
The Financial Times recalls that the Chinese Internet giant is betting big on these taxis of the future, an increasingly close future, after major setbacks in recent months. Indeed, the group posted a loss of 131 million dollars for the first quarter of the year against a profit of around 3.8 billion dollars in the same period the previous year.
The British newspaper notes that the firm’s usually profitable services, namely the search engine and video-on-demand services, have experienced almost zero growth, attributed to the slowdown in the Chinese economy.