Baidu embraces Jiangling, the first mass-produced L4 self-driving car is coming?
Recently, it was reported that the first driverless production model designed with L4 autonomous driving standards, Baidu Apollo RT6, has officially landed on the list of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in September and is about to land.
After inquiring about the new product announcement of the 375th batch of "Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products", the editor confirmed that another model with the same appearance as the Apollo RT6 has indeed completed the declaration, and its manufacturer is Jiangling New Energy and the trademark is the Yichi brand.
Previously, the first high-level self-driving car that Baidu bet on was Jidu, and later due to cooperation problems, it was classified as Geely, and Baidu became the largest supplier. Now Baidu is betting on Jiangling to continue mass-producing high-level self-driving cars.
From a technical point of view, can this Yi Chi brand Apollo RT6 meet the expectations of unmanned driving?
According to the current Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Apollo RT6 has a size of 4765x1886x1715mm, a wheelbase of 2830mm, an overall curb weight of 1875kg, and a total mass of 2175kg.
At the same time, in terms of product name, the model is a swapped pure electric multi-purpose passenger car, at the previous Apollo RT6 press conference, Baidu Group Vice President Li Zhenyu also said that the model will be between SUV and MPV, the main riding experience.
Previously, at the press conference, Baidu showed the side sliding doors of the Apollo RT6, as well as independent rear seats, modular front rows, and so on. It is reported that the modular front row of the model will support seats, vending machines, desks, game consoles, etc. to meet the needs of different users.
On the declaration map, it can be seen that the front seats of the declared model are installed, and the number of declared members is 4. Therefore, the modular front row may be canceled. And according to the current regulatory requirements, the model is still driver-centered, so basic driving equipment including steering wheels, mirrors and other basic driving equipment will still be retained.
At the three-electric level, the manufacturer of the new car is Jiangling New Energy, and hangs its LOGO, the type of power battery used is lithium iron phosphate battery, and the manufacturer is Hive Energy Technology Co., Ltd. with a Great Wall background, in addition, the click supplier of this new model is BYD's Verdy Power, which has a maximum power of 110kW.
The most important aspect of intelligence, previously, Li Zhenyu said that Apollo RT6 is a collection of vehicle regulations, mass production, fully redundant intelligent driving mass production model, and has the ability to unmanned driving urban complex roads, the cost is only 250,000 yuan.
The redundancy here includes power supply redundancy, communication redundancy, L4 redundant braking system, L4 redundant steering system, architecture redundancy, computing unit redundancy, and sensor redundancy. Therefore, it has high requirements for hardware reserves, software algorithms, etc.
In terms of hardware, the model will be equipped with a vehicle-level high computing power dual computing unit, with a maximum computing power of 1200TOPS, which is also the highest computing power model among the current mass-produced models (the maximum computing power of the current model equipped with dual ORIN-X chips is 508TOPS). In terms of sensors, Apollo RT6 will integrate 38 sensors, including 3 lidars, which can achieve full coverage of the triple-detection capability of near, medium and far to achieve more accurate perception.
At the software level, in fact, Baidu Apollo has already carried out autonomous driving travel services in Beijing Yizhuang, Guangzhou Huangpu, Shanghai Jiading, Hebei Cangzhou, Hunan Changsha, Chongqing Yongchuan and other places, with more than 1 million orders and an actual driving mileage of more than 32 million kilometers.
Finally, in order to ensure safety, Baidu Apollo has set up a safety officer remotely to ensure vehicle safety by remotely monitoring the vehicle. The ratio is currently 1:1, and Baidu says it will gradually reduce to 10:1, where a security officer monitors 10 vehicles.
Summary:
Combined with the current news from all parties, the editor believes that the Apollo RT6 will most likely not be directly put into the C-end market for sale, but more will still be used as a procurement object for B-end travel companies. However, it should be noted that the cost of high-computing power smart cars has entered the 250,000 range, and the landing speed of smart cars is accelerating.