Time.news – For the first time in China, people will be able to take self-driving taxis: without anyone behind the wheel and without even the limitation of the obligation of an operator sitting next to the driver (who is not there), to intervene in an emergency.
Baidu won the bid to provide ride-hailing robotaxi services to the publicBig Tech which owns the country’s first search engine and the largest fleet of self-driving cars in China.
The permits, issued by the southwestern municipality of Chongqing and the central city of Wuhan, allow commercial robotaxis to offer driverless rides to the public and went into effect on Monday.
The first cities involved
“These permits have a profound significance for the industry – Wei Dong, head of security operations at Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group, told Reuters – if we think about space exploration, this moment is equivalent to landing on the moon”.
At first, Baidu said it will deploy a batch of five paid robotaxis in each citywhere they will be able to operate in designated areas from 9 to 17 in Wuhan and from 9:30 to 16:30 in Chongqing.
Baidu (which said it had completed 196,000 “assisted” robotaxi rides in the first three months of the year and will present its financial results at the end of August) is also in talks with local governments forr expand this service to Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
In mid-July the company had presented Apollo RT6its new autonomous vehicle with a removable steering wheel (because it is no longer needed), with the aim of using it for its robotaxi service in China, as early as next year.
The company had announced that the cost of the vehicle is expected to be around 250,000 yuan (about 36,257 euros) for the new model, compared to 480,000 yuan (-48%) for the Apollo Moon, the previous model. Baidu has been operating in the robotaxi sector for some time and has been working on the development of self-driving cars since 2017, the year of the launch of the Apollo division. Its service, Apollo Go, has a fleet of 300 autonomous vehicles.
Competition from Toyota and Nissan
In April 2021, it was authorized (along with rival Pony.ai) to offer transportation services aboard autonomous vehicles in several cities, including Beijing, although a human being was still required to remain in the driver’s seat.
In China, Baidu’s competitors in this sector are called Pony.ai, backed by Toyota Motor, WeRide, which has received investments from Nissan Motor e Guangzhou Automobile Group. In the United States, Tesla and Waymo.
China is a major test bed for autonomous vehicles, with a small group of ambitious companies regularly setting new records on various fronts, such as removing driver safety, opening their services to the public, or exercising on public roads and the number of miles their vehicles were tested.