Before Tesla, Baidu released a new generation of unmanned cars.
On May 15th, Baidu Apollo released the sixth generation unmanned car of the Carrot Run on Apollo Day 2024. The car was jointly built by Baidu Apollo and Jiangling New Energy. Compared with the previous generation of unmanned cars, the released unmanned car has been upgraded in terms of intelligent driving and cost, and will be deployed to thousands of vehicles in Wuhan within the year.
It is worth mentioning that with the release of the sixth generation unmanned car of the Carrot Run, Baidu Apollo is also accelerating the commercialization process of unmanned cars. "Baidu has been tackling autonomous driving for ten years, and the most frequently asked question during this period is about commercialization." Chen Zhuo, General Manager of Baidu's Autonomous Driving Business Department, said that in order for Robotaxi to achieve commercialization, both revenue and cost sides need to be taken into account.
Complete the layout of thousands of unmanned vehicles in Wuhan within this year
According to data from McKinsey, since 2010, global companies and venture capital have invested over $100 billion in autonomous driving related technologies. However, these investments have not yet realized their commercial value, leading investors to gradually lose confidence in unmanned vehicle projects like Robotaxi.
Chen Zhuo believes that the calculation method of the business model based on orders is very simple, which is "average passenger mileage per unit x average number of vehicles per day x revenue per unit kilometer". To achieve higher revenue goals, it is necessary to continuously improve spatiotemporal coverage and meet the needs of more users.
"The scale includes two aspects. Firstly, there are more people using (unmanned vehicles), and secondly, when there is more demand, it can be accommodated." Chen Zhuo said, "We will increase the scale, achieve full coverage of the entire city, and provide users with a good experience, which will correspondingly increase our income."
In addition, Chen Zhuo also revealed that "at the beginning of 2023, our operating scale was relatively small, and we would lose a lot of money every day running each car. By the beginning of this year, with the significant improvement of time and space coverage and operational efficiency, the revenue of Carrot Run had increased nine times, and the losses had decreased by more than half.".
It is understood that Wuhan is the focus of Baidu Apollo's unmanned vehicle business. In two years, Baidu Apollo's commercial demonstration operation of unmanned vehicles in Wuhan has expanded from a small area outside the Southeast Fourth Ring Road to more than half of the city. Wuhan has also become the world's largest autonomous driving travel service area, with unmanned vehicles providing services covering an area of 3000 square kilometers.
At present, Baidu Apollo has invested 500 autonomous vehicle in Wuhan, including more than 300 fully autonomous vehicles. Wuhan is also the first city for Baidu Apollo's new car launch. The sixth generation unmanned car of the Carrot Run, which was released this time, will also be put into use in Wuhan and put into operation in batches, with the deployment of thousands of unmanned cars completed within the year.
In addition to Wuhan, the sixth generation unmanned car of Carrot Run will gradually be put into use in other cities. It is understood that in promoting the commercialization process of unmanned vehicles, Baidu adopts a method of small-scale operation to large-scale replication.
"Based on the autonomous driving model, we have fully equipped ourselves with the technical capabilities required for urban level autonomous driving travel services. Facing a new city, it only takes six months to complete the preparation of fully autonomous driving travel services. In the future, this verification time will be further shortened," said Xu Baoqiang, General Manager of Baidu's Autonomous Driving Technology Department.
Intending to enter a profitable period in Wuhan by 2025
In Chen Zhuo's view, in order for unmanned vehicle projects like Robotaxi to achieve commercialization, optimization is also needed on the cost side, which mainly includes three dimensions: vehicle cost, operating cost, and service cost.
It is worth noting that autonomous driving technology has been relatively mature after more than a decade of development, but large-scale commercial operation and continuous safety assurance are still challenges. To obtain regulatory approval, the industry typically chooses to equip advanced sensor kits, which also leads to high costs for unmanned vehicles.
Yin Ying, General Manager of Baidu Automotive Robotics Department, said, "Thanks to the development of intelligent cars, we can see that sensors are decreasing in price. Previously, the cost of autonomous driving kits may have been higher than the cost of the entire vehicle, but now it can basically reach a level of parity or lower."
It is reported that the sixth generation unmanned car of the Carrot Run, equipped with Baidu Apollo's sixth generation intelligent system solution, has a 60% decrease in overall vehicle cost compared to the fifth generation model, with a unit price of 204700 yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the sixth generation unmanned car of the Carrot Run adopts the form of battery swapping and energy replenishment. "There are two benefits to battery swapping. Firstly, we no longer need to manually plug and unplug the charging gun, saving manpower and its efficiency is slightly higher than manual plugging and unplugging (charging gun). Secondly, the fastest fast charging now takes at least half an hour to charge once, and replacing the battery in three minutes is enough. The time saved allows us to provide more services to users, which is also an improvement in operational efficiency." Chen Zhuo explained.
As a transportation platform, after reducing the cost of bicycles, it is also necessary to solve operational problems, and achieving automated operation network technology is the key to improving efficiency.
Regarding this, Carrot Run stated that it has achieved functions such as automatic vehicle wake-up, automatic departure, automatic battery swapping, and automatic cleaning through a full process automation system, making vehicle management more efficient and improving vehicle operation time and safety. It is reported that with the construction of an automated operation network, the operating costs of Carrot Run will be reduced by 30%, and through continuous optimization of autonomous driving technology and cabin efficiency, service costs will be reduced by 80%.
"After thousands of sixth generation unmanned vehicles are gradually put into use, the revenue growth rate of Carrot Run will be faster, and it is now very close to the critical point of break even." Chen Zhuo predicts that by the end of 2024, Carrot Run will achieve a balance of income and expenditure in Wuhan, and enter a profitable period in Wuhan in 2025.