BEIJING, July 21 (Reuters) – Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc on Thursday unveiled its new autonomous vehicle (AV) with a movable steering wheel, with plans to use it for its robotic taxi service in China next year.
The unit price will drop to 250,000 yuan ($37,031.55) for the new model, compared to 480,000 yuan for the previous generation, Baidu said in a statement.
“This massive cost reduction will enable us to deploy tens of thousands of AVs across China,” Baidu CEO Robin Li said at the Baidu Global Conference. “We’re moving towards a future where taking a robotics will be half the price of taking a taxi today.”
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The new vehicle will have level 4 autonomous capabilities that do not require human intervention, with 8 lidars and 12 cameras next to the car. Lidars are radar-like detection systems that use pulsed laser light rather than radio waves.
The company does not reveal the manufacturer of the new model.
Tesla ( TSLA.O ) Chief Executive Elon Musk told an investor conference in April that the company aims to start mass production of its robotics without a steering wheel or pedals in 2024 and predicted that a robotic ride would cost -less than a bus ticket.
Alphabet Inc’s ( GOOGL.O ) Waymo also unveiled steering-less robotics last year, saying it plans to launch its “fully autonomous vehicles” in the U.S. in the coming years.
However, automakers and tech companies around the world are still waiting for approval from regulators to deploy such vehicles in the real world.
The vehicle will hit the roads without a steering wheel once Chinese authorities approve it, Baidu Senior Vice President Li Zhenyu said at the conference, adding that the driving ability of Baidu’s new AV can be compared to an experienced driver with more than 20 years of experience.
Baidu, which launched its autonomous driving unit Apollo in 2017, is among a number of companies in China seeking to make the mass use of autonomous vehicles a reality.
Its rivals in this field include Toyota Motor ( 7203.T )-backed Pony.ai and WeRide, which received investments from Nissan Motor ( 7201.T ) and Guangzhou Automobile Group ( 601238.SS ).
Apollo Go, Baidu’s robotic taxi service, has served more than 1 million in 10 Chinese cities since it launched in 2020, and Baidu said in April it had received approvals to deploy the unmanned robotic taxis on open roads in Beijing.
($1 = 6.7510 Chinese Yuan Renminbi)
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Reporting by Yingzhi Yang and Brenda Goh; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Stephen Coates
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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