Baidu and Volvo jointly build L4 self-driving car Apollo to practice "safety" as its mission

An era of autonomous driving that is accelerating due to the "China Speed" is coming. On November 1, 2018, the annual Baidu World Conference was held at the China World Hotel. As the most eye-catching Baidu Apollo autonomous driving open platform, it once again brought the "rich fruits" of China's autonomous driving this autumn to thousands of partners, developers, and media on the scene. In just a few hours of the conference, Baidu Apollo brought China's first L4-level autonomous driving mass-produced passenger car jointly built with FAW Hongqi, and launched two major plans with Volvo to deeply customize L4-level autonomous driving passenger cars for mass production. At the same time, Baidu Apollo has also achieved comprehensive upgrades in five major autonomous driving products and solutions in information security, high-precision maps, autonomous parking, high-speed autonomous driving, and AR-HUD, to escort mass production and people's travel safety. In the field of vehicle-road collaboration, which has been hotly discussed in the industry recently, Baidu Apollo also announced the latest landing progress: it will begin to face the three typical scenarios of highways, parking lots, and urban roads, and will soon be officially landed in Changsha at the end of 2019, making smart transportation a reality. Finally, Baidu launched the AI ​​city core “ACE Ace Plan” to bring artificial intelligence into every corner of the city.

At the meeting, Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li and FAW Chairman Xu Liuping jointly unveiled the mass production plan of the new Hongqi model, the latest L4-level autonomous driving passenger car jointly developed by Baidu Apollo. The partner who worked with Apollo to create this new car is a well-known brand that every Chinese is proud of - "Hongqi". This also marks that China's autonomous driving will officially "enter" more open scenes and people's daily lives. Baidu Apollo and FAW Hongqi released the mass production plan of L4-level autonomous driving passenger cars: small-scale offline demonstration operation in 2019 and large-scale deployment in more cities in 2020. Xu Liuping said: "The cooperation with Baidu Apollo is a very important content for us. I believe that the cooperation between FAW and Baidu is undoubtedly one of the major events in the automotive industry." Robin Li also said: "We also look forward to FAW's continuous progress in the field of autonomous driving and planting red flags on this track."

In addition to domestic manufacturers, Baidu Apollo's mass production potential has also begun to affect the world. Volvo, a Swedish car company known for its safety, announced that it has joined Baidu Apollo. The two parties will launch a deep customization plan for L4 autonomous driving passenger cars with the goal of mass production. Baidu President Dr. Zhang Yaqin and Volvo CEO and President Hakan Samuelsson jointly announced this cooperation plan. Baidu is not only Volvo's first international partner in China to deeply cooperate and jointly develop autonomous driving cars, but Volvo is also the first international car company that Baidu has launched deep customization and joint development with the goal of mass production of L4 passenger cars. To date, Apollo has a total of 131 partners.

Baidu Apollo's global "circle of friends" continues to expand, behind which is the solid technical cultivation and multi-scenario practice of the product matrix. At the conference, Li Zhenyu, vice president of Baidu and general manager of the intelligent driving business group, announced the upgrade of a series of Baidu Apollo product solutions, including autonomous parking, high-speed autonomous driving, AR-HUD, high-precision maps, information security and other five aspects. Among them, for the "hard problem" of parking, Baidu Apollo's autonomous parking solution has begun to land in many places. In the future, it will be able to easily handle 99% of parking spaces and save 30% of time for users. In Li Yanhong's view, "autonomous parking can open up the 'last mile' and solve the problem of time-consuming and laborious parking." Only such autonomous driving can truly liberate people. In addition, Baidu also announced the operating status of Apollo, the world's first L4-level mass-produced autonomous driving bus: Apollo has achieved 10,000 test rides, running 10,000 kilometers, and maintaining safety and zero accidents. More than 8,000 feedbacks provided by users have also helped Apollo to continue to iterate and improve. Apollo's reliable autonomous driving capabilities have attracted many car companies. It is estimated that by 2019, the number of "new species" equipped with Apollo L4 autonomous driving capabilities will reach 10,000.

The realization of autonomous driving depends not only on "smart cars" but also on "smart roads." At the conference, Baidu released three typical application scenarios of Apollo vehicle-road collaboration, namely: highways, parking lots and urban roads. And such a vehicle-road collaboration solution has also been implemented in a real city-Changsha. According to reports, Changsha has become the first city in China to fully implement self-driving taxis + vehicle-road collaboration. The first batch of self-driving taxis in China will be tested and operated on a large scale in Changsha. It is expected that the scale will reach 100 vehicles in 2019, helping to accelerate the implementation of intelligent transportation. Regarding the future travel mode, Baidu imagines: "The way of traveling while eating hot pot and singing songs will no longer be an imagination. Maybe in the future, what makes you happy and excited will no longer be "someone empties your shopping cart for you, but someone invites you to get in an unmanned car."

Smart transportation has also become a reality from imagination due to the advancement of vehicle-road collaboration. Apollo has come up with a solution to the pain point of modern cities - road congestion. Robin Li said: "Traffic congestion in Beijing causes a loss of 150 billion yuan every year, and on average each driver will be stuck on the road for 100 hours a year." And this is just the direct loss caused by traffic congestion. "Vehicle-road collaboration can achieve real-time, accurate, one-to-one and one-to-many perception of changes in the external environment, so we can greatly reduce the time of congestion. The collaboration between vehicles and roads can also enable various vehicles to evade more intelligently during commuting to avoid traffic accidents." Robin Li described the benefits of vehicle-road collaboration. In the face of the problem of traffic congestion, we must not only make efforts in vehicle-road collaboration, but also think more deeply from the perspective of the overall layout of the city. Dr. Zhang Yaqin also introduced the core of Baidu's AI city plan: "ACE Ace Plan".

The future smart city is based on the three pillars of smart transportation: ACE, autonomous vehicles, connected roads, and efficient city, which is divided into three steps. He said: "In the future, we will digitize the roads." In the research of autonomous driving, Apollo is not limited to leading in speed, but stands from the perspective of ordinary people and works hard to solve people's pain points.

From fulfilling the promise of mass production to expanding the scale of mass production, from building smart cars to opening up smart roads, the brief appearance of Apollo at Baidu World in 2018 embodies Apollo's comprehensive thinking in the field of autonomous driving. Baidu Apollo's increasing improvement is to make autonomous driving accessible to the public as soon as possible. As Li Zhenyu said at the conference, he hopes that "Apollo has the shortest distance between two points" from parking to parking. Apollo is also building the "shortest road" to the smart city through firm belief and continuous innovation.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.