Baidu Inc (百度) has won approval to deploy the first fully autonomous self-driving taxis on China’s roads, giving it an edge over rivals such as Pony.ai Inc (小馬智行) and XPeng Inc (小鵬汽車).
The tech giant has secured permits to operate robotaxis in Wuhan and Chongqing, it said in a statement yesterday.
The move marks a relaxation of Chinese rules, which previously mandated someone must be in the vehicle to take control in case of an emergency.
Photo: Reuters
Baidu is to begin to provide fully driverless robotaxi services in designated areas in Wuhan between 9am to 5pm, and Chongqing from 9:30am to 4:30pm, with five Apollo fifth-generation robotaxis operating in each city. The service area covers 13km2 in the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone, and 30km2 in Chongqing’s Yongchuan District.
Baidu is working with regulators in Beijing and Guangzhou to obtain similar permits, Baidu Intelligence Driving Group vice president Wei Dong (魏東) said.
“It’s as if we’ve landed on the moon and built a base there,” he said in a video interview. “It’s just a matter of time for us to go to Mars or even beyond our solar system.”
In the US, Cruise LLC in June won a license to charge for fully driverless rides in selected areas in San Francisco, but the General Motors Co-backed start-up is now facing regulatory scrutiny after two on-road incidents, including an accident that left two people with minor injuries.
In China, Baidu and self-driving start-up Pony.ai earlier this year received approval from local regulators to deploy vehicles without someone in the driver’s seat in part of Beijing.
Baidu, which operated China’s largest search engine, is transitioning to artificial intelligence and self-driving vehicles after its core advertising revenue shrank in the mobile era.
Its smart-driving business provides software to automakers such as Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd (吉利汽車) and runs a ride-hailing app powered by a fleet of self-driving vehicles in major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai.
Baidu last month unveiled a new version of its robotaxi, called the Apollo RT6, that it sad costs nearly 50 percent less to make than its previous model.
The company plans to double the number of robotaxis it has on Chinese roads to 600 by the end of this year, Wei said.
EXTRATERRITORIAL REACH: China extended its legal jurisdiction to ban some dual-use goods of Chinese origin from being sold to the US, even by third countries Beijing has set out to extend its domestic laws across international borders with a ban on selling some goods to the US that applies to companies both inside and outside China. The new export control rules are China’s first attempt to replicate the extraterritorial reach of US and European sanctions by covering Chinese products or goods with Chinese parts in them. In an announcement this week, China declared it is banning the sale of dual-use items to the US military and also the export to the US of materials such as gallium and germanium. Companies and people overseas would be subject to
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
TENSE TIMES: Formosa Plastics sees uncertainty surrounding the incoming Trump administration in the US, geopolitical tensions and China’s faltering economy Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday posted overall revenue of NT$118.61 billion (US$3.66 billion) for last month, marking a 7.2 percent rise from October, but a 2.5 percent fall from one year earlier. The group has mixed views about its business outlook for the current quarter and beyond, as uncertainty builds over the US power transition and geopolitical tensions. Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), a vertically integrated supplier of plastic resins and petrochemicals, reported a monthly uptick of 15.3 percent in its revenue to NT$18.15 billion, as Typhoon Kong-rey postponed partial shipments slated for October and last month, it said. The
COLLABORATION: The operations center shows the close partnership between Taiwan and Japan in the field of semiconductors, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo said Tokyo Electron Ltd, Asia’s biggest semiconductor equipment supplier, yesterday launched a NT$2 billion (US$61.5 million) operations center in Tainan as it aims to expand capacity and meet growing demand. Its new Taiwan Operations Center is expected to help customers release their products faster, boost production efficiency and shorten equipment repair time in a cost-effective way, the company said. The center is about a five-minute drive from the factories of its major customers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) advanced 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer fabs. The operations center would have about 1,000 employees when it is fully utilized, the company
RSS