Baidu's mass production of the world's first L4 autonomous driving car, Apollo, is of greater significance than just

On July 4, at the second Baidu AI Developer Conference, Robin Li announced that the L4-level autonomous bus "Apollo", a joint venture between Baidu and Xiamen King Long, has officially rolled off the production line. "Apollo" is known as the world's first L4-level autonomous driving bus.

Apollon is the first in the world to enter L4

The American Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) divides automobile automation into five levels. Level 3 is conditional autonomous driving, which requires driver intervention.

L4 is highly automated driving, which no longer requires driver intervention, but cannot handle all operating conditions and can only complete driving tasks under designed conditions. L4 smart cars can generally achieve automated driving on highways and urban roads.

The L5 level requires that the autonomous vehicle can achieve full vehicle driving in any scenario.

Baidu's "Apollo" has no steering wheel, no driving seat, no accelerator and brake pedals. There is naturally no driver intervention during the driving process, realizing true L4 level unmanned driving.

At the press conference, Robin Li introduced the destination of this batch of "Apollo": the first batch of 100 "Apollo" will be sent to Beijing, Xiong'an, Shenzhen, Pingtan, Fujian, Country Garden, Wuhan, Hubei, Tokyo, Japan and other places for commercial operation.

It is reported that this batch of "Apollon" will be used mostly in closed and semi-closed working scenes, such as factory areas, parks, and elderly communities, where the routes are simple and linear and the crowds are relatively dispersed. Considering safety issues and the lag of relevant regulations, this batch of "Apollon" cannot be used on urban roads and highways at present.

In fact, being the first to announce the mass production of L4 autonomous driving vehicles means that Baidu's autonomous driving technology has caught up with the world's leading level.

China's autonomous driving technology developed later than foreign countries, but there is no generation gap with foreign companies in terms of computing level, road test data, high-precision map reserves and even supporting hardware. Ford and GM and other automakers' autonomous driving technology is close to L4 level, but none of them have yet announced mass production.

At present, Google's Waymo is the leader in the field of autonomous driving. Waymo has already started using driverless cars to pick up passengers in April this year, and has driven 8 million kilometers on urban roads in 25 cities.

Waymo's self-driving cars have the lowest "error rate" in the industry among the many cars tested in California, USA. In 350,000 miles of driving, Waymo had three crashes, while General Motors had 22 accidents in 132,000 miles.

In the next few years, many international car companies will launch cars that can drive automatically on city streets, but the speed and route will be restricted.

The "Apollon" who made his debut at the last minute is of great significance

At last year's Baidu World Conference, Robin Li announced that Baidu and Xiamen King Long will mass-produce driverless minibuses in 2018. In May this year, Robin Li emphasized that Apollo will be delivered as scheduled in July.

Now, Li Yanhong's boast has finally come true. Although Apollon has just reached the passing line of L4, it is much stronger than the PPT car manufacturing. In fact, Apollon's on-time delivery has effectively boosted the market's confidence in autonomous driving.

Although Apollo cannot currently drive on the highway, Baidu's progress in autonomous driving is obvious to all.

Baidu Apollo 1.0 version only has 35,000 lines of code, while the current version 3.0 has more than 220,000 lines of code. As an application version, Apollo's code is even larger.

Once Apollo is put into commercial use on a large scale, it is foreseeable that it will not only accumulate autonomous driving data for Baidu; the boosted market confidence will also make it easier for Baidu to gain more industry goodwill and develop more partners.

Baidu's Apollo is the leader in the development of China's autonomous driving technology. Although it lags behind Google's Waymo, there is no generation gap. The successful mass production of Apollo shows that China's autonomous driving industry has further enhanced its ability to defend the local market.

China is the world's largest automobile sales and production market. With its scale advantages and rich application scenarios, if China's driverless technology can gain a foothold in the local market, it will have a great opportunity to go global with the Chinese market as its foundation. In this process, the role played by Baidu will be immeasurable.

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.