Yifan from the Vice-Pilot Temple
Smart Car Reference | Official account AI4Auto
Rushing out of Asia and going to the world, counting on ......, let's watch the radish run.
According to the latest news, Baidu Apollo plans to expand the scope of Robotaxi operations overseas.
At this point in time, it's quite interesting.
Compared with domestic autonomous driving stars, Baidu Apollo's overseas layout in the past has not been mentioned much, but just one day before Musk released Robotaxi, Baidu's global layout was exposed and began to move to the front of the stage......
"Soil radish" goes to sea
Recently, it was reported that Baidu Apollo will expand its operations, targeting the domestic market on the one hand, and being the first to deploy Robotaxi in Hong Kong.
On the one hand, it seeks overseas expansion and lands in Singapore and the Middle East, which are also favored regions for domestic autonomous driving stars.
There are also analysts who believe that since Baidu has established cooperation with Nissan, Japan may also be a potential target region.
From the perspective of technology, commercialization and public opinion, Radish Express already has the foundation for international expansion.
In terms of technology, Baidu Apollo uses large models to reconstruct the technology stack and launched the Apollo ADFM (Autonomous Driving Foundation Model) large model, which has stronger perception and generalization capabilities of unmanned vehicles on complex roads, and faster migration between different cities.
In terms of commercialization, according to Baidu's second-quarter financial report, the average daily orders of Radish Express in the same period were close to 10,000, and the cumulative number of services exceeded 7 million, and it has been fully unmanned in the Wuhan test area.
A new generation of unmanned vehicles will be launched, with lower vehicle and operating costs, and it has previously said that it will break even in a single city this year.
This means that the dawn of commercialization of autonomous driving is beginning to emerge, and it is close to achieving positive feedback.
In terms of public opinion, the radish ran out of the circle before, which not only received widespread attention in China, but also caused heated discussions overseas.
Some overseas bloggers shouted after a test ride of an unmanned car in Wuhan:
At that time, some netizens urged Musk to change because of this:
特斯拉的Robotaxi和FSD要加速啊。
Now we know that not only did it not speed up, but it was delayed:
New models, new technology stacks, mass base... In the new stage of the carrot run, it's time to step to a bigger platform and face off against the head geese in the new chess game.
"Toyo radish" overseas
In fact, there have been domestic autonomous driving stars who have actively deployed to go overseas, such as Pony.ai and WeRide.
Pony.ai has signed cooperation agreements with Korea, Saudi Arabia, U.A.E. and Luxembourg and is in the promotion stage.
WeRide has a layout in Singapore and the U.A.E., and recently reached a cooperation with Uber, WeRide's Robotaxi will be connected to the Uber platform, and will start operation in the U.A.E. by the end of this year.
As for the overseas autonomous driving head goose, since the Cruise accident caused a series of twists and turns, today only the "old and young" are still worth paying attention to:
Waymo and Tesla.
According to the latest data, Waymo's weekly Robotaxi orders have reached 100,000, which leads the world and is the number one competitor of domestic Robotaxi stars.
After today, the new heavyweight players will also be officially announced.
In a rare move, Tesla abandoned its factory and used Warner Bros. Studios in Los Angeles as the location for its Robotaxi launch.
Some analysts believe that a closed place will be more conducive to Musk's display of Robotaxi, and the scene will be more controllable.
Some analysts said that Tesla may release two products on the same day:
It is the "Cybercab" of the Robotaxi and the "Model 2", a 150,000-class passenger car. The two cars are similar in appearance and share a platform, but serve different purposes.
Although from past experience, Tesla's new products often take a long time from release to delivery, such as the Cybertruck, coupled with policy restrictions, Tesla will not soon achieve "driverless", so as to keep pace with Baidu and Waymo.
However, as a representative of the gradual ascension route, from the "BEV+Transformer" paradigm to end-to-end, Tesla, which has led the development of the industry for a long time, may only be a matter of time before it becomes the head goose of autonomous driving.
Musk has previously said that FSD may be approved in Europe and China by the end of this year.
Unfortunately, due to the ban in United States, Chinese and American autonomous driving stars cannot achieve "you come and go", but autonomous driving is destined to go global, and "Baidu Waymos" will eventually compete on the same stage.
To compete for the "Hercules Cup" in the autonomous driving industry, it is inevitable to "rush out of Asia and go to the world".
Now, domestic autonomous driving stars have taken their first steps.