That being said, do you remember when you first heard the word "autonomous driving"?
I remember that in 2015, the Guardian published an article with the headline that from 2020 onwards, you will have a permanent driver in your car, which is autonomous driving.
It is also predicted that 10 million self-driving cars will be on the road worldwide in 2020.
Its predictions weren't out of thin air, as GM, Google's Waymo, Toyota and Honda announced in 2020 that they would produce fully autonomous self-driving cars.
Even Musk, the world's richest man and leader of "American opinion," predicts that Tesla will achieve this goal by 2018 and by 2020 at the latest.
But in 2022, there is not a single civilian self-driving car on the road in the world.
Old horse, what about my driverless car?
But let's not be upset. If you really want to experience driverless cars, commercial Robotaxi is already on the road, and the next APP in the operation area can be hit, which is no different from the usual online car.
So today we will start from Waymo and Baidu, the two head autonomous driving companies, to see what the current automatic driving is doing.
At this time, it is estimated that some small partners will say, why are they the heads?
Waymo's dad, Google, is the world's first company to engage in autonomous driving, whether it is patents or test miles in the United States are far ahead, it does not head who is headed.
Baidu is known as the cradle of China's autonomous driving enterprises.
Most of the founders of domestic autonomous driving companies that you can now name are from Baidu. In 2020 and 2021, Guidehouse, a world-renowned research institution, has continuously listed Apollo as one of the four "leaders" in the field of global autonomous driving, and is the only Chinese enterprise in the leader camp.
So back to the point, let's see what these two players are doing.
In 2010, Google announced its own plans for self-driving car service, which was new enough. No one in the driver's seat can get you on the road, and lawmakers in various states are very afraid of this thing and don't give it a chance to hit the road.
It's normal to be scared, in case you bump into someone who's responsible, Waymo or the government? Or the driver?
So Google began a long "ask grandpa to grandma" lobbying road, begging for two years, Nevada to take effect a Nevada self-driving car law.
Google also became the first company in the world to have a license for autonomous driving.
But you have to remember, I just allow you to test, one can not carry people and two can not operate, and even when the test will be followed by police cars.
In 2013, the government found that this car did not seem to be dangerous, and after cooperating with Google, it could bring financial revenue and create jobs.
So Nevada, Florida, California and Michigan have all thrown olive branches to allow self-driving cars to be tested on the road, but the speed cannot exceed 40 km/h during the test, and the car must be equipped with safety officers.
Even the governor of California held a special press conference, "Comrades, the plot of science fiction can be realized tomorrow, California not only leads the United States, but even leads the world", and the audience burst into applause.
em... But you really have it.
At this time, the government and autonomous driving companies have developed a new model, allowing policies to drive the development of autonomous driving enterprises. The government has opened up new roads for you, demarcated demonstration areas, and enterprises have trained new technologies, and new technologies can get better policy support if they are trained well.
Ensure the safety, practice the technology, the same joy.
So in 2015, the U.S. government also accelerated the introduction of policies related to autonomous driving, Texas even began to allow vehicles without steering wheels and brakes on the road test, and California also relaxed the rules.
In 2015, Google also invited a blind man in Texas to get into a driverless car with no steering wheel and no brake throttle, the world's first fully driverless car to take to the public road.
With the full support of the policy, in April 2017, Waymo launched a self-driving car operation plan in Phoenix, that is, you can hit the next ride-hailing APP to drive a driverless ride-hailing car.
In the year that followed, 400 people experienced the service.
By 2021, the service will be opened to San Francisco until now.
Baidu, on the other hand, began to lay out autonomous driving in 2013, and launched Apollo in 2017, obtaining 593 autonomous driving test licenses in China, including 398 manned test licenses.
In the matter of license plates, we are much more advanced and more standardized than the United States.
The license plate here is the same as the license plate, and only with it can you get on the road.
In the field of autonomous driving, Beijing has launched R1-R5 five-level test roads, which correspond to the five-level test license of T1-T5.
The T5 license plate corresponds to highways, urban expressways and their entrances and exits, etc., and the T4 is simpler than the T5 response scenario, such as testing on the main and secondary roads in the city.
Each self-driving enterprise can obtain the corresponding license according to its own ability. The lower the level, the simpler the road, the slower the speed is not a car, but it also means that your level is not good.
In 2019, Baidu obtained the first batch of T4 level autonomous driving test licenses issued by Beijing Municipality, and five of them were won by Baidu, making it the first and only company in China to obtain this level of license.
In August 2021, Baidu's self-driving travel service platform Radish Run was launched and opened to the public and began operation.
And Baidu's operation scale is much larger than Waymo's.
Waymo's manned operations are limited to California and Arizona, with a maximum of 52,000 units in a single quarter. Baidu's Radish Run has opened test ride services in 9 cities, and began to commercialize paid operation services in Beijing, Chongqing and Yangquan, and in the fourth quarter of 2021, the number of manned orders has reached 213,000.
Turnip Fast Running bicycles in Yizhuang have an average daily peak of 28 singles. According to the data of the Guangzhou Municipal Transportation Department in September 2021, the average daily order of online ride-hailing bicycles in the city was only 14.15 in that month.
Previously, whether it was Waymo or Baidu, their Robotaxi had to operate with a security officer in the main driver.
Today, Baidu became the first batch of enterprises in China to obtain the Beijing unmanned manned demonstration application license, and opened the unmanned autonomous driving travel service on the same day.
To put it bluntly, in the future, when Baidu's Robotaxi operates passengers, the main driver can have no safety driver.
Speaking of this, I believe that everyone will have a feeling that in addition to the competition of the technical strength of various car companies in the autonomous driving industry, there is also a contest between the speed and maturity of policy landing.
In March, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a 155-page "final rule" that would no longer require self-driving car manufacturers to equip fully autonomous vehicles with manual driving control systems.
To put it bluntly, in the future, it is possible to produce civilian cars without steering wheels.
And on the home page is a historic step with "Historic step", ready to occupy a leading position in the autonomous driving industry from the formulation of policies and regulations.
On the domestic side, more than 10 policies have been issued in the past 6 years to ensure the comprehensive development of "morality, intelligence, physical beauty" in China's autonomous driving industry from various angles such as road testing, infrastructure construction, and digital transportation.
In more than 40 provinces and cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, we will establish autonomous driving demonstration zones and pilot zones to help autonomous driving enterprises "practice" good technology.
In addition, the complexity of China's roads is much higher than that of the United States, and the gold content of autonomous driving in China's road tests is also much higher than that of the United States, which is recognized by the industry. In order to meet these challenges, Baidu has made full efforts under the three-layer safety system of bicycle intelligence, monitoring redundancy and parallel driving to ensure passengers' travel safety and riding experience from all aspects.
Secondly, China's autonomous driving research and development companies, patent technology is not worse than the United States, as of March 2022, Baidu Baidu autonomous driving Chinese patent applications cumulative disclosure of more than 3,700 items, ranking first in China, of which the number of high-level autonomous driving global patent families more than 1,000, ranking first in the world.
By the beginning of 2022, Chinese companies accounted for more than half of California's fully driverless test licenses.
In addition to autonomous driving expertise, we are leading the United States in industry-related 5G cloud driving and vehicle-road collaboration. Previously, China's C-V2X (Cellular Internet of Vehicles) technology became the only international standard for the global Internet of Vehicles, and promoted the international 3GPP standards organization to develop relevant standards.
In short, whether it is technology research and development or industry development, China has achieved a stage victory in the field of automatic driving. Baidu's technology, products and operations are leading Waymo, but the real contest has only begun, in the future, in addition to the help and guidance of policies, more important is the commercialization ability of enterprises.
It's time for guys to pull out the real guys, but the energy is "rolled up".