The Chinese company Baidu has introduced a fully autonomous electric vehicle Apollo RT6, designed to work as part of its Apollo Go unmanned taxi service. The first copies will arrive in the fleet of the Chinese service in 2023, while the cost of one such taxi is about $37,000.
The Apollo RT6 format is a 4760 mm long monocab (2830 mm wheelbase) with sliding doors that make it easier to get into the cabin. The steering wheel can be quickly removed to increase usable space. The electric vehicle is based on Xinghe’s proprietary platform.
The electric car is equipped with a proprietary L4 autonomous driving system with a processing power of up to 1200 TOPS. Information comes from 38 sensors, including 8 lidars and 12 cameras, which are almost imperceptibly integrated into the transparent roof, headlights and front of the body. During the tests, the system covered more than 32 million virtual kilometers. The developers compare the capabilities of this system with a human driver with 20 years of driving experience.
Baidu expects to start testing the Apollo RT6 robot taxi in China from the second half of next year, gradually increasing its fleet of these models from 10,000 to 100,000 copies. The Apollo Go robot taxi service was launched in 2020 and has since been expanded to 10 cities in China, where it has already completed more than 1 million trips. Baidu plans to expand the geography of the service to 65 cities by 2025 and to 100 cities by 2030.
Source: Electric
