The 19th Shanghai International Auto Show kicked off at the National Convention and Exhibition Center in Shanghai, east China, April 19, 2021. As the world’s leading platform for autonomous driving and intelligent vehicles, Baidu Apollo held a press conference themed “Follow Your Heart, Follow Your Wisdom”. At the meeting, Baidu Apollo LEGO type vehicle intelligent solutions were fully unveiled, among which Intelligent Drive and Intelligent Cloud two products ushered in a major upgrade. Among them, Zhiyun products can support car companies to quickly build intelligent capabilities, reducing the autonomous driving research and development cycle, which originally needed at least seven years to complete, to six months.
Li Zhenyu, senior vice president of Baidu Group and general manager of intelligent driving business group, announced on the scene that the accumulated testing mileage of Baidu L4 level automatic driving has exceeded 10 million kilometers, and the models created by L4 level automatic driving technology have been in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, starting the journey of mass production of automatic driving to truly experience “any bank in the city”. By the end of this year, the Baidu Apollo Intelligent Driving Area will cover urban roads and expressways in 20 cities, and 100 cities will be covered by 2023. Li also revealed that the second half of 2021 will see a peak in the mass production of Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving, with one new model coming to market every month. This also means that Baidu Apollo will go to a new level, continue to lead the car intelligent track, and define a new global intelligent car standard with its top self-driving strength.
▲ Li Zhenyu, senior vice president of Baidu Group and general manager of intelligent driving business group, delivered a speech
Apollo Intelligent Drive to build the world’s strongest autonomous driving production engine
After eight years of research and development and practice, Baidu Apollo has become the global leader in the field of autonomous driving, and has successfully released cutting-edge technologies into the field of intelligent vehicles. APOLLO LEGO-type intelligent vehicle solutions include four series products of high quality, leading, open and assemblable, “Intelligent Drive, Intelligent Module, Intelligent Map and Intelligent Cloud”, which can provide customized solutions according to the intelligent mass production needs of vehicle enterprises at different levels, and moped enterprises can build future-oriented intelligent vehicles. At the Shanghai Auto Show, Baidu Apollo displayed one of the core products of LEGO intelligent vehicle solutions, Apollo Intelligent Drive, which is based on L4 level automatic driving technology and is the world’s strongest automatic driving mass production engine.
▲ Apollo intelligent driving program demonstration
Specifically, Baidu Apollo’s world’s most powerful autonomous driving mass production engine has the following three advantages:
First of all, the engine has full range of driving freedom. The engine includes ANP, the world’s first driving domain solution based on L4 level autonomous driving capability, and AVP, the world’s first mass-produced L4 level autonomous driving parking domain solution. “Double A solution” enables users to drive freely in urban road scenes and parking scenes.
Secondly, the ANP (Apollo Navigation Pilot) in the engine is the strongest Navigation assistance on the market. ANP adopts a purely visual scheme and comes from the same technical architecture as Baidu Apollo L4 level autopilot. Data is symbiosis and shared, which can ensure the experience of L4 technology dimension reduction and release to the greatest extent. Compared with commercially available lidar solutions, ANP has the characteristics of low cost, mass production and self-learning.
▲ Li Zhenyu announced the Apollo L4 level self-driving road mileage data
At the media conference, according to Li Zhenyu, the mileage of Apollo L4 automatic driving has exceeded 10 million kilometers, and Baidu has become the only Chinese enterprise in the world to achieve the accumulation of 10 million kilometers of road testing. In addition, the mileage of Apollo’s autonomous driving simulation test exceeded 1 billion kilometers, and the high-precision map was updated at minute level, and the coverage of 100 cities was millions of kilometers… These top level autopilot capabilities make up Apollo’s strongest pilot-assistance product. At present, Apollo has launched the ANP+AVP mass production self-driving experience “City as I Can” activity in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to challenge the complex urban road scenes in China with the most powerful autonomous driving technology.
▲ Baidu Apollo, together with senior executives of Weima, GAC, BAIC New Energy and Ford, has built the strongest automatic driving volume production engine
Another advantage of the world’s most powerful self-driving production engine is Apollo’s insistence on an open approach to working with car companies. At present, the AVP product of Apollo has been mass-produced and marketed on the W6 model of WIMA, and has received a warm response in the industry. In the second half of 2021, Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving will usher in a peak of mass production. A new car will be launched every month. In the next 3-5 years, it is expected that the volume of pre-assembly mass production will reach 1 million units. On the day of the auto show, a group of old friends of Baidu Apollo, such as Weima, GAC, BAIC New Energy and Ford, also gave great support to the smart driving products of Baidu Apollo.
LEGO-style intelligent automobile products are favored by partners of global automobile enterprises
In addition to Intelligent Drive, Baidu Apollo LEGO-type intelligent vehicle solutions, another major product — Intelligent Cloud also ushered in a major upgrade, opened the “three clouds” mode, including automatic driving cloud, big data cloud, car safety cloud. With Smart Cloud products, Apollo enables auto companies to quickly build intelligent capabilities. For example, it will take at least seven years to complete the autonomous driving research and development cycle, and shorten it to six months, so that intelligence can be transformed into products, and autonomous driving technology will enter the high-speed channel of mass production.
Specifically, in the field of autonomous driving cloud, Apollo can help partners quickly build AI intelligent production lines and form a self-learning system, so that car companies can quickly “build good cars” with autonomous driving technology capabilities. In the field of big data cloud, Apollo will cooperate with automobile enterprises to realize the closed-loop self-learning of intelligent cockpit, so that OEM can better understand cars and users’ “selling good cars”, and provide users with driving experience of thousands and thousands of aspects. In the field of automobile security cloud, Apollo will make use of years of accumulation of security technologies to help automobile enterprises to have a more solid defense shield “make good use of the car” in the era of digitalization and intelligence, so that intelligent vehicles will continue to evolve and at the same time have a high degree of security and no fear of attack.
▲ Apollo and Chery reached a new strategic cooperation
Based on the “three clouds”, Baidu Apollo and Chery Automobile jointly announced that they have reached a new strategic cooperation with cloud as the core. In the future, the two parties will be committed to providing more secure intelligent car services for Chery Automobile users.
At present, Baidu Apollo’s intelligent vehicle business has established the world’s most active ecosystem of intelligent vehicle products, and LEGO-type intelligent vehicle solutions have become the first choice for the mass production of intelligent technology for global car enterprises. On the same day of the auto show, Baidu Apollo and Hyundai Motor achieved a comprehensive upgrade on the cooperation of intelligent vehicle alliance. In the future, all models of Hyundai Kia sold in China and imported models will be equipped with the ability of small degree on-board OS. Up to now, Baidu Apollo has established cooperative relations with more than 70 global automobile brands, and more than 600 models are equipped with Apollo intelligent automobile products.
▲ Li Zhenyu announced the intelligent performance of Apollo automobile
The most powerful autonomous driving team in history expands, with 90 percent of new personnel dedicated to technology research and development
April 19, the opening day of the Shanghai Auto Show, is Baidu Apollo four weeks old birthday. Four years ago, at the 2017 Shanghai Auto Show, Baidu officially announced the launch of the Apollo program to provide an open, complete and safe software platform for partners in the automotive industry and the autonomous driving field. This not only avoids the need for partners to duplicate the wheels in the construction of autonomous driving systems, but also accelerates the process of global autonomous driving landing. In four years, Baidu Apollo has gone from autonomous driving pioneer to smart car industry innovator. In the era of intelligent automobile, Baidu Apollo has won the trust with its actions, and is more firm than ever in its own line.
In the future, Apollo will continue to adhere to the long-term philosophy of technology, and continue to increase investment in the field of autonomous driving and vehicle intelligence. Apollo will continue to recruit top talents this year. Within this year, the team will expand enrollment on a large scale. 90% of the new staff will be dedicated to technology research and development, which will accelerate the large-scale deployment of Apollo Go, Baidu’s RoboTaxi business. And LEGO-style vehicle intelligent technology front mass production and large-scale implementation in order to better respond to the diversified needs of customers.
The era of intelligent vehicles with the Internet of Everything has arrived. Baidu Apollo will make use of eight years’ accumulation to help global car companies get the key to customs clearance faster in the tide of intelligent vehicle transformation, and provide more safe, efficient and convenient future travel services for the general public.