Chongqing and Wuhan offered China's first-ever commercial completely driverless robotaxis services through Baidu-backed autonomous driving platform Apollo Go on August 8.
Baidu, China's leading search engine and artificial intelligence developer, has secured China's first-ever permits for offering commercial fully autonomous ride-hailing services in Chongqing and Wuhan via its autonomous ride-hailing unit, Apollo Go.
Having expanded to first-tier cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Apollo Go, Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service, has now become the world's largest robotic service provider with the milestone of more than one million orders recently.
Baidu secures the permits in Wuhan and Chongqing a few months after providing driverless ride-hailing services to the public on open roads in Beijing. The new licenses were issued by the southwestern municipality of Chongqing and the central government of Wuhan, allowing Baidu to provide paid services for fully driverless robotaxi within the designated areas in these two cities, with five Apollo 5th-generation robotaxi operating in each city.
Chongqing and Wuhan are two cities which have been steering towards innovative approaches to intelligent transportation mobility and services in recent years, from developing infrastructure to amending new regulations for autonomous vehicles.
"This is a tremendous qualitative change for the future mobility in China. It is believed that these permits are a key inflection point with respect to when the automotive industry can fully roll out fully self-driving services at scale," said Wei Dong, vice president and chief safety operation officer of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Group.