T3 Mobility, IDRIVERPLUS to pilot Robotaxi operation in Suzhou with autonomous+manual model

Beijing (Gasgoo)- China’s autonomous driving company, IDRIVERPLUS has officially delivered its first batch of modified Robotaxis to T3 Mobility, the ride-sharing platform established by FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor, and Changan Auto at their strategic agreement signing ceremony.

Signing ceremony; photo credit: IDRIVERPLUS

According to earlier reports, IDRIVERPLUS has received Robotaxi orders from T3 Mobility for hundreds of units, marking the largest Robotaxi order in China’s autonomous driving field then. 

Robotaxi; photo credit: IDRIVERPLUS

According to the company, the Robotaxi adopts a “1+4” LiDAR deployment scheme, with LiDARs from RoboSense. The scheme uses one 80 beams LiDAR, the RS-Ruby Lite as the main LiDAR, covering all-around perceptions, and four additional RS-Bpearl LiDARs to clear up near-field blind spots. 

Meanwhile, IDRIVERPLUS and T3 Mobility plan to co-explore an innovative Robotaxi commercialization model, with a dual “autonomous + manual” driving mode. In order to shatter the bounds of the designated Robotaxi operation zones, the partners came up with a solution to adopt autonomous driving in permitted pilot zones, and let the onboard safety drivers take over the ride manually outside of the zones. This way, the Robotaxis can serve more users on a larger map. 

T3 Mobility’s ride-sharing service has branched out to 68 cities in China, with over 75 million registered users, and its daily average order numbers hasve surpassed 3 million orders. 

The said innovative Robotaxi operation will be initially piloted in Suzhou and gradually expand to the whole country.