That's it! Next year in the Greater Bay Area, it will be possible to call self-driving taxis like online ride-hailing cars

On December 21, Nandu reporter learned from GAC Group that GAC Group, Wenyuan Zhixing and Ruqi Chuxing held a strategic cooperation and investment signing ceremony at the World Economic Forum China Future Automobile and Transportation Conference, announcing that it will launch the Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) business next year, when residents of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will be able to enjoy autonomous driving travel services.

In addition, at the above ceremony, GAC Group also officially announced its strategic investment in Wenyuan Zhixing, and Wenyuan Zhixing will also make strategic investment in Ruqi Travel. Three forces from OEMs, mobility platforms, and autonomous driving companies will realize the design, R&D, mass production, and commercial operation of Robotaxi's front-loading models.

(Wang Huanqing, vice mayor of Guangzhou (middle), Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GUANGZHOU Automobile Group (second from left), and others witnessed the signing of the contract.) ）

Previously, Nandu reporters have reported that recently a number of vehicle manufacturers have piled up into the self-driving taxi business, compared with the previous "single-handedness" of autonomous driving companies, vehicle companies have incomparable huge advantages in model design, research and development, mass production, and industrial chain scheduling capabilities (for details, you can see "Call autonomous vehicles like online car-hailing!"). A number of OEMs have joined the track").

Taking this cooperation as an example, based on GAC Group's top vehicle research and development and fully redundant vehicle platform that can be used for fully unmanned driving, Wenyuan Zhixing's L4-level automatic driving technology, such as Qi Travel's smart travel platform and massive data, will jointly promote the iteration of autonomous driving technology and vehicle research and development and manufacturing, create Robotaxi products with first-class fully unmanned driving capabilities, and realize the large-scale operation of Robotaxi.

It is reported that the three parties plan to gradually establish a Robotaxi fleet and achieve commercial operation in the next few years, with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as the core to radiate to the whole country, of which it is planned to launch Robotaxi operation on the Ruqi Travel platform in 2022 to provide users with autonomous driving travel services.

As early as 2018, GAC Group and Wenyuan Zhixing cooperated to launch Robotaxi and carry out trial operation in Guangzhou. At this year's Guangzhou Auto Show, Ruqi Chuxing and Wenyuan Zhixing jointly exhibited Robotaxi equipped with Wenyuan Zhixing's latest sensor suite, WeRide Sensor Suite 4.0, and the on-site public audience can experience autonomous driving without threshold.

Also at the auto show, GAC Group announced the launch of the GAC Xingling Electrical and Electronic Architecture, which supports the mass production of fully unmanned vehicles. As a latecomer to the online ride-hailing market, Ruqi Chuxing has operated in many cities in the Greater Bay Area. According to Ruqi Travel, at present, its travel user penetration rate in the core cities of the Greater Bay Area has exceeded 30%, and in the process of operating C-end users, the closed loop of data generation, recycling, calculation and storage can feed back TOC and Wenyuan Zhixing, accelerate the iteration of autonomous driving technology, and in the future, users will play self-driving taxis, which will not be much different from calling online ride-hailing cars.

Nandu reporter Zhong Jianting