Baidu permitted to conduct fully driverless road tests in Beijing

Beijing (Gasgoo)- China’s tech giant Baidu announced on December 30 its Robotaxi service platform, Apollo Go, was granted Beijing’s first road test permits for fully driverless vehicles without driver or safety operators onboard. 

Photo credit: Baidu

This marked another city of Apollo Go’s driverless deployment in China. Currently, Apollo Go’s fully self-driving vehicle fleets has entered the three cities of Beijing, Wuhan, and Chongqing.

According to Baidu, a total of 10 fully unmanned autonomous vehicles will be deployed in the Beijing High-level Automated Driving Demonstration Area (BJHAD), conducting road tests in the designated time and routes. In 2023, Baidu Apollo will continue to expand its business scale, and plans to add 200 fully driverless operating vehicles nationwide, striving to build the world's largest driverless operating service area.

Beijing is one of the most active cities in autonomous driving technology innovation and entrepreneurship. The development of the intelligent connected vehicle industry is a crucial focus of the city. Up to now, more than 600 autonomous vehicles have been deployed in Beijing, with a total road test distance exceeding 10 million kilometers.

As to Baidu, the company has accumulated over 40 million kilometers of safe L4 autonomous driving distance. By the end of the third quarter of 2022, Apollo Go has completed more than 1.4 million Robotaxi service orders.