BAIC ARCFOX, Baidu jointly-developed Robotaxi starts mass-production

Beijing (Gasgoo)- BAIC Bluepark, the holding company of the premium EV brand, ARCFOX, stated that the company’s co-developed Robotaxi with Baidu’s Apollo has completed technical development and started mass-production.

ARCFOX Apollo Moon; photo credit: Baidu

The said Robotaxi is Baidu’s 5th generation of autonomous mass-produced vehicle, the Apollo Moon, built on the premium ARCFOX’s αT battery-electric model.

The said vehicle adopted Baidu’s “ANP-Robotaxi” architecture, making it lightweight and capable of sharing intelligent driving vehicle data with other vehicles. Each vehicle is equipped with 13 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 2 LiDARs. Its computing power reaches 800TOPS, adding its corresponding unmanned redundancy functions, the car can realize a fully driverless autonomy.

According to the company, the production cost of the Apollo Moon-powered ARCFOX vehicles is reduced to RMB 480,000 ($74,736), only one-third of the industry average. Moreover, compared to the previous generation of Baidu’s autonomous vehicle , the ARCFOX version offers ten-fold performance, 99.99% of the successful delivery rate, and up to 20,000 hours of service time (roughly five years).

Early on, Baidu has also inked a strategic partnership with ARCFOX for unmanned Robotaxi application. In three years, the partners plan to launch 1,000 unmanned Robotaxis in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, and other cities.

In October, the driverless ARCFOX Apollo Moon vehicles have started operation at Shougang Park in Beijing, offering fully autonomous ride-hailing services to the public.