On June 17, Baidu said that the company's self-driving platform Radish Fast Run has been awarded a license in Pingshan District, Shenzhen, officially opening the L4-level unmanned commercial pilot operation, which is also the fourth city in China after Wuhan, Chongqing and Beijing.。

It is reported that the operation area of radish fast running in Shenzhen is 188 square kilometers, the operation time is 7: 00 to 22: 00, the operation time covers the morning and evening peak, users can call the automatic driving service through Baidu multi platform。

Baidu's driverless layout has been commercialized for a long time and the pace of landing has accelerated.

Baidu's driverless business has been laid out for a long time and is moving towards its peak step by step.。In 2013, Baidu officially started the self-driving project. At that time, Baidu planned to rely on the strategic transformation of Baidu's high-precision maps to simultaneously develop its assisted driving, unmanned driving, and intelligent transportation technologies.。In 2015, Baidu's Autonomous Driving Division (L4) was established, marking Baidu's important step in driving technology without safety officers.。In April 2017, Baidu officially named its unmanned business as the "Apollo (Apollo)" program, using the name of the moon landing to demonstrate its courage to expand its territory.。

According to public statistics, Baidu's overall R & D investment in the project has exceeded 150 billion yuan in the past ten years, with an annual R & D investment of no less than 10 billion yuan, and has accumulated more than 4,600 autonomous driving patents, keeping the number of patent applications in the world for four consecutive years.。At the first quarter of 2021 earnings meeting, Baidu CEO Robin Li said with ambition that there is no more comprehensive and mature solution than Baidu in the global intelligent driving field.。

At present, the pace of Baidu's unmanned commercialization is accelerating.。According to the 2022 Baidu Autonomous Driving Travel Service Annual Report, Baidu's "Radish Run" online car-hailing service has covered Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chongqing and other cities, with seven new commercial cities added in the past year.。In terms of users, the number of active users of the "Radish Run" platform for the whole of 2022 increased nearly twice as much as in 2021, and the number of orders also increased by multiple times.。As of the first quarter of 2023, "Radish Run" orders have exceeded 2 million.。

According to the "2023 China Autonomous Driving Industry Research Report" released by 36 Krypton Research Institute, autonomous driving technology has ushered in a "turning point" in the past year.。At present, the autonomous driving industry has gone from focusing on the first half of the technology competition to the second half dominated by commercial landing.。

In addition, the national level and local governments have also issued a series of policies and plans in due course to promote the healthy and rapid development of autonomous driving-related industries.。In November 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Notice on the Pilot Work of Smart Connected Vehicle Access and Road Access, which put forward a series of planning and guidance requirements for the pilot smart connected vehicle products, further advancing the development process of autonomous driving.。

Competition on track intensifies Baidu says there will be a wide range of driverless enterprises in 2025

Perhaps smelling of huge business opportunities, car companies are intensifying their competition on the track。On June 15, Xiaopeng Automobile officially announced that its city navigation assisted driving (Navigation Guided Pilot) function was officially opened in Beijing, becoming the first high-level intelligent assisted driving in the industry to be opened in the urban area of Beijing, mainly applicable to all ring roads and major expressways in Beijing.。

Xiaopeng said that the feature has been open to public beta users and will be available with Xmart OS 4..3.Version 0 is pushed to Max users of G9 and P7i, while Xiaopeng P5 P models are being upgraded to Xmart OS 3.5.0, the urban NGP function will also apply to the above Beijing urban area。

It is understood that when the user uses the NGP function, the user needs to set the end point and initiate navigation on the Xiaopeng vehicle's vehicle, and then activate the function twice with the down lever, and the vehicle will automatically follow the navigation route to the destination。

In May this year, BYD Executive Vice President Li Ke also revealed at the company's internal investor communication forum that BYD has expanded its enrollment to a team of 4,000 to 5,000 people, ready to make every effort to tackle automotive intelligence and autonomous driving technology.。In addition, according to a number of insiders, BYD has set up a smart driving research division in Shanghai last year to enable employees to turn more attention to research on high-end autonomous driving technology.。

Previously, Nvidia also announced at GTC 2023 that it has reached a partnership with BYD, which will use the Nvidia DRIVE Orin high-performance computing platform in multiple models of the next generation Dynasty series and Ocean series.。It is reported that DRIVE Orin is a system-on-chip released by Nvidia, which can provide 254 TOPS (trillion operations) per second and is the central computer of smart vehicles.。

Tesla, as another veteran who has been working on autonomous driving technology for a long time, has also accelerated the pace of research on the technology.。According to a previous research report released by CITIC Securities, Tesla has put its FSD (fully autonomous driving) algorithm to v11..4. The end-to-end capability of FSD is realized, that is, the intelligent driving function including high-speed piloting, urban road piloting and parking can respond to the environment faster, and adjust the speed when necessary to ensure that all relevant Personnel can get a safer experience。

In addition, it is also reported that an important topic during Musk's (Elon Musk) visit to China at the end of May was to communicate with Chinese government officials about the commercialization of FSD in China.。Previously, the technology, as one of Tesla's superior technologies, was questioned by the Chinese market because of data security issues.

Faced with the crisis of confidence, Tesla responded positively and announced in 2021 that it would establish a localized data center in China to localize data storage.。Tesla promised that all data generated by the sale of vehicles in the Chinese mainland market will be stored in China, and if there is a demand for data to leave the country, it will be reviewed by the national regulatory authorities to confirm the safety before sending data abroad.。

At the end of October of the same year, Tesla said that it had completed the relevant approval and filing of the data center in accordance with the relevant requirements of the Shanghai Data Center Construction Guidelines (2021 Edition), and built the Shanghai Super Factory Data Center to store Chinese operational data such as factory production.。

According to Baidu's forecast, around 2025, there will be a large number of companies operating driverless taxis commercially around the world.。At present, the smoke has slowly arrived, and may even gradually become a new burst of market pursuit.。