- Zoe Kleinman
- Tech affairs editor
image source,Qian Jin/Baidu
Chinese search company Baidu has unveiled the next-generation self-driving vehicle “Apollo RT6”, claiming that its self-driving technology is equivalent to a driver with 20 years of driving experience.
Current Chinese regulations still require self-driving cars to have a safety driver in the seat.
But Baidu said that one day in the future, it will be able to remove the RT6’s detachable steering wheel, and the free space can be installed with an extra seat, or a vending machine, desk, or game console as needed.
image source,Qian Jin/Baidu
Baidu says the Apollo RT6 costs just 250,000 yuan (£31,000), far less than the previous-generation model.
Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu, said at the Baidu World Conference 2022, “The cost of driverless cars has dropped so much that we can deploy tens of thousands of these vehicles across the country. In the future, driverless cars will require a It’s half cheaper than taking a taxi now.”
According to Baidu’s plan, RT6 will join the current Apollo Go self-driving taxi service in the second half of 2023, conduct small-scale trials, and eventually plan to put 100,000 vehicles on the road.
Apollo RT6 has a total of 38 sensors, including 12 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and eight Lidars.
Baidu said the Apollo Go self-driving taxi service, which is being tested in 10 cities including Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, has seen more than 1 million test rides since the start of 2020.
But BBC China media analyst Kerry Allen said there was a lot of discussion on Chinese social media about the safety of self-driving taxis and the impact on jobs.
“In some pilot areas, many netizens also expressed their desire to experience self-driving taxis but ‘difficult to get them’.”
Other Chinese companies developing self-driving taxis include Alibaba’s AutoX, and Pony.ai, founded by former Google and Baidu engineers.