Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter
Baidu announced Monday that won permits in China to offer commercial fully driverless robotaxi services to the public on open roads, a huge step towards the usage of autonomous vehicles in the country.
Having received the permits, Baidu’s Apollo Go will begin to provide fully driverless robotaxi services in the designated areas in Wuhan from 9 am to 5 pm, and Chongqing from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, with five Apollo 5th gen robotaxis operating in each city.
The areas of service cover 13 square kilometers in the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone, and 30 square kilometers in Chongqing’s Yongchuan District.
By the end of March 2022, Baidu had a total of 4,000 autonomous driving patent applications in China and “the number of global patent families for high-level autonomous driving has exceeded 1,500, ranking first worldwide”.
Amid increasing regulatory approval of the expansion of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the permits reflect regulatory authorities’ strong recognition and trust in the strength of Baidu’s autonomous driving technology, the company said.
“This is a tremendous qualitative change,” said Wei Dong, Vice President and Chief Safety Operation Officer of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group. “Fully driverless cars providing rides on open roads to paying customers means we have finally come to the moment that the industry has been longing for. We believe these permits are a key milestone on the path to the inflection point when the industry can finally roll out fully autonomous driving services at scale.”
Having already expanded to all first-tier cities in China, covering Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Apollo Go has now surfaced to become the world’s largest robotaxi service provider, recently reaching the milestone of more than one million orders.
Written by Cláudio Afonso | info@claudio-afonso.com | LinkedIn | Twitter