The total number of Baidu self-driving road test licenses has reached 150.
Editor’s note: This article is from “Future Car Daily” (WeChat public ID: auto-time), author: Xiao Cheng Yi.
Author | Cheng Hao
Editor | Li Huanhuan
On the road to promoting autonomous driving, Baidu has taken another step forward.
Beijing time on November 7 (November 6th, US Eastern Time), Baidu said in an unaudited financial report in the third quarter of 2019 that Baidu recently obtained 15 autopilot road test licenses in Wuhan. Hezhou, Hebei Province, obtained 30 autopilot manned test licenses. Among them, the Ganzhou license was the first to issue an autopilot manned test license in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Li Yanhong said that as of now, the total number of Baidu autopilot road test licenses has reached 150, accounting for more than half of all approved autopilot road test licenses in China. According to Baidu Apollo officially, 80 of them have been allowed to be tested.
On November 6, Baidu Apollo Autopilot Team launched a manned test in Luzhou, covering an area of over 100 kilometers, which means that China’s first district-wide global autopilot manned test road network was officially opened. Automated vehicles have moved from fixed section testing to unfixed sections. In addition, according to Zhangzhou News, the Baidu Apollo Autopilot Calibration and Maintenance Center and Experience Station in Chenzhou City have been basically completed and will be put into use.
This is the second stop of Baidu’s Apollo autopilot manned test, the first city is Changsha.
In June of this year, Baidu received 45 manned test licenses issued by the Changsha Municipal Government. The first batch of 45 self-driving teams officially opened trial operation on some open test sections in Changsha on September 26. On the same day, Changsha honorary citizen representatives took the lead in experiencing Baidu Robotaxi vehicles. Ordinary Changsha citizens can also log in to Apollo’s official website to apply for seed users and have the opportunity to test the experience.
It is expected that by the end of this year, Baidu’s autopilot trial operation in Changsha will cover 50 kilometers and reach 135 kilometers in the first half of 2020.
Automatic driving has long been the primary strength of the layout of major companies, but commercial landing has always been a bottleneck. GM’s autopilot company Cruise and Google’s Waymo have delayed the launch of driverless taxi services.
In this regard, Baidu automatic driving department executives to the future car daily (ID: auto-time) said: “I hope that Waymo’s test can go smoothly and set an example for the autopilot industry.” He said that security is the number one driver of unmanned driving. The essence of Waymo’s service is also manned. Automated driving is still a long way from the test.
(I am the future car daily author Cheng Wei, pay attention to intelligent network, auto-driving and sharing travel dynamics, welcome to exchange and broke the news at any time. Please add WeChat tuanzi_C, add please note name, company, position.)
