On the morning of July 21, Baidu and CCTV News held the "2022 Baidu World Conference" online. At the conference, Li Zhenyu, senior vice president of Baidu Group and general manager of the intelligent driving business group, officially released the sixth-generation mass-produced unmanned vehicle ApolloRT6, which is expected to be put into trial operation of Carrot Run in small batches in the second half of 2023.

｜A car without a steering wheel is here

Would you choose a car without a steering wheel?

Self-driving has been talked about for so many years, and so many leading companies have joined, but the revolutionary self-driving vehicle without a steering wheel is still a revolutionary breakthrough based on Baidu's self-driving technology.

Apollo RT6 is a mass-produced vehicle independently developed and forward-designed by Baidu for future travel. The vehicle has been deeply designed for passenger needs and driverless travel scenarios, and supports steering wheel and steering wheel-free modes.

It is reported that ApolloRT6 is derived from Baidu's self-developed "Apollo Galaxy" architecture platform. As the first model of the platform, ApolloRT6 has achieved 100% vehicle-level and full vehicle redundancy system, which is more reliable than modified vehicles on the market. The safety is two to three orders of magnitude higher, and the safety of passengers is fully guaranteed. In the future, ApolloRT6 can realize steering wheel-free autonomous driving under the permission of relevant policies and regulations.

｜Half the price of a driverless car

Compared with the previous five-generation models, ApolloRT6 has achieved the deep integration of AI technology and vehicle engineering, and has the advantages of high safety, high quality and low cost.

According to reports, based on a major breakthrough in autonomous driving technology, the cost of Apollo RT6 has been reduced to 1/10 of the industry's, only 250,000 yuan, which is comparable to the price of current new energy vehicles on the market.

Robin Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, said: " Having a driverless car in the future will be half cheaper than taking a taxi now. The cost of driverless cars has dropped so much that we can deploy tens of thousands of these cars across the country. already."

The future urban intelligent transportation will not only have "smart cars", but also "smart roads". Vehicle-road coordination can effectively solve important problems such as safety, congestion, and carbon emissions. According to the latest data disclosed at the conference, Baidu's intelligent transportation solution has been practiced and verified in more than 50 cities across the country, and Baidu's AI information control technology has achieved the world's most advanced position.

According to the plan, Baidu will use RT6 on the Carrot Run platform next year, and tens of thousands of vehicles can be deployed nationwide in the future. In addition to unmanned driving, ApolloRT6 is also equipped with humanized functions such as Lingxi interactive lamp language with identification and prompting functions, intelligent electric side sliding doors, a variety of intelligent spaces, independent seats, and intelligent interactive system backward design.

｜Autopilot enters the second half

Today's autonomous driving is ushering in its own spring.

In terms of commercialization, as the earliest enterprise in China to deploy autonomous driving, Baidu Apollo's autonomous driving capabilities have been widely verified, with a total test mileage of more than 32 million kilometers. service, with an order volume of 1 million, Baidu has become the world's largest autonomous driving travel service provider.

According to the plan, in the second half of 2023, small batches will be put into the trial operation of Carrot Run, and the annual planned production capacity will gradually increase from 10,000 to 100,000 units according to the pace of operation and deployment. It is expected to operate in 65 cities by 2025, and will cover 100 cities by 2030.

In terms of policy, on April 27, the Beijing Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pioneer Zone officially released the "Unmanned Manned Test License", and issued the first batch of domestic automatic driving unmanned demonstration application notices to Baidu; Recently, Shenzhen also issued the Regulations on the Administration of Intelligent Connected Vehicles in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, which aroused applause from the industry.

In addition, Baidu also disclosed an interesting statistic: At present, 83% of people in China have accepted driverless cars, and a young man in Beijing takes driverless cars more than 600 times a year, and has become the most driverless car driver in the world within a year. .

At the same time, after being tempered by Chinese-style road conditions, the technical strength of domestic players has been at the forefront of the world together with the United States, and today's release of the steering wheel-free unmanned vehicle ApolloRT6 has confirmed that Baidu is leading the way in this field. Pull to the front. For a long time, there is a common understanding in the industry about the evolution direction of the automobile industry. From fuel vehicles, to new energy vehicles, and then to smart vehicles, it will be a three-step development of the automobile industry.