Taxi! Where's the driver?

Baidu's Apollo Go Robotaxi. Photo/People's Daily

Driverless taxi service in Beijing seems set to usher in the era of robotaxis, People’s Daily Online

Chinese internet search giant Baidu has launched a self-driving taxi service in Beijing, the first company to carry passengers in autonomous vehicles in the capital.

With a fleet of 40 vehicles, the Apollo Go Robotaxi service covers a road network of about 700km as an autonomous driving test area. It has established nearly 100 pick-up and drop-off stations in residential and business areas in the Yizhuang area, Haidian and Shunyi districts of Beijing.

Passengers in Beijing can now hail autonomous cabs free of charge via Baidu Maps or Apollo Go apps without advance reservation.

The move has come after the Beijing-based tech giant opened its robotaxi service to the public in Cangzhou, Hebei province, in August – the first robotaxi coverage to a city's downtown area.

That followed Baidu's self-driving taxi service in Changsha, Hunan province, launched in April – providing free rides to passengers across an area of 130 sq km.

Self-driving technology is expected to witness large-scale commercial application in the next five years, said Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu. He made the remarks at the Baidu World 2020, the company's annual flagship technology conference held in Beijing last month.

Intelligent infrastructure based on the vehicle-road coordination system is expected to improve traffic efficiency by 15 to 30 per cent, Li said – resulting in estimated economic growth of 2.4-4.8 per cent.

"China is taking the lead in the autonomous driving sector around the world," said Li Zhenyu, corporate vice-president of Baidu and general manager of the company's intelligent driving group, adding that Baidu Apollo will continue to push forward the commercial application.

"Autonomous driving is definitely the future direction of the automobile industry. It not only solves traffic safety problems but also greatly improves the efficiency of transportation, brings economic benefits and liberates people from repetitive driving," said Jiang Zheng, a self-driving expert at China's GAC research and development centre.

The launch of self-driving taxi services in designated areas might be the best scenario because of high operating costs of private vehicles, Jiang said.

China is planning scale production of vehicles capable of conditional autonomous driving and commercialisation of highly autonomous vehicles (in certain circumstances) by 2025, according to a blueprint issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and nine other ministries.

Baidu is one of several Chinese technology firms that have launched autonomous taxi services to the public in the country. Didi Chuxing, China's largest ride-hailing platform, announced in June the opening of its on-demand robotaxi service to passengers in parts of Shanghai.

So far, road tests for self-driving vehicles are available in more than 20 provinces and cities in China. Companies such as SAIC Motor, BMW, Didi Chuxing and DeepBlue Technology have been authorised to hold passenger-carrying tests.

Yang Diange, dean of the automobile engineering department at Tsinghua University, said the Level 4 self-driving vehicles are expected to enter into large-scale commercial use in 2030.

Level 4 autonomy means the car can drive by itself in most conditions without a human driver. He noted more efforts are needed to make breakthroughs in key technologies, including information safety, tests scenarios and laws and regulations.

This article was originally produced and published by People's Daily Online. View the original at en.people.cn