The peak showdown between China and the United States for self-driving taxis: Baidu versus Waymo, who will win against Tesla?

As of October 2020, exciting milestones have occurred in the commercialization of self-driving taxis (RoboTaxi) in China and the United States:

1. Waymo: October Beijing time On the 9th, Waymo, the leader in self-driving cars in the United States, officially announced that its self-driving taxi service, Waymo One, will provide fully unmanned taxi services in Phoenix. The service method is to call a car through the APP Waymo One, but people who can call a car still need to be approved by Waymo. ?

2. Baidu Apollo: On October 10, Beijing time, Baidu officially announced that its self-driving taxi service Apollo Go will provide free self-driving to the public within the Beijing self-driving test area. Taxi service. The service method is to call a taxi through apps or mini-programs such as Baidu Maps and Apollo Go. Everyone can experience Baidu's self-driving taxi service through the above methods. ?

3. Tesla: On October 13, Beijing time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated on Twitter that a limited-edition test version of AutoPilot’s upgraded version of “fully autonomous driving” will be available in the United States. It will be pushed to a select few experts and car owners who drive carefully next Tuesday (October 21) local time. Previously, Elon Musk stated that he would have 1 million RoboTaxi vehicles by 2020, which triggered Kai-fu Lee's "bet" to take it all.

4. GM Cruise: On October 16th, Beijing time, Cruise, an autonomous driving company owned by General Motors, officially announced that it had obtained a fully autonomous driving test license from the California Department of Transportation. This is the second step in the process of obtaining a fully autonomous driving test license from Waymo in the United States and AutoX in China. Later, the California Department of Transportation issued the third fully driverless test license for RoboTaxi. According to Cruise’s plan, fully driverless testing will be conducted in San Francisco by the end of 2020. At the user level, it also shows a gratifying aspect: users’ enthusiasm for self-driving taxis allows practitioners to see the possibility of changing the world as a result of their work. ?

In the United States, after Waymo launched a fully driverless taxi service, a user uploaded a video of more than 70 minutes on YouTube. The smooth driving process demonstrated Waymo's fully driverless capabilities.

In China, after Baidu launched the free self-driving taxi service provided by Apollo Go in Beijing, there was an endless stream of people trying it. According to official data, the number of orders in a single day on the 12th reached 2608 orders, the highest order from one site is 600 orders.

Anyone who has used Didi knows how much transportation capacity is needed to meet such travel demand. For Baidu Apollo Go, which currently has only 40 vehicles, queuing is inevitable. This also reflects users’ enthusiasm and expectations for RoboTaxi, as well as the broad prospects for RoboTaxi’s commercialization.

However, for China and the United States, because the market environment, road environment, user habits, etc. are very different, RoboTaxi's technical routes in the commercialization process will also be different. Self-driving players in the United States, led by Waymo, have firmly established the technical route of bicycle intelligence; China has shifted from bicycle intelligence at the beginning to the technical direction of vehicle-road-cloud integration. With the support of new infrastructure such as 5G, it is expected to accelerate autonomous driving. Speed ??of commercialization. ?

01? Detailed comparison of RoboTaxi services in China and the United States

At present, the pattern of RoboTaxi players in China and the United States is very clear.

In the United States, there are Waymo, a representative of technology companies, Cruise, a representative of car companies, and Aptiv, a representative of first-tier suppliers. With the exception of Cruise, which has yet to develop a RoboTaxi service for the public, both Waymo and Aptiv have provided RoboTaxi services respectively.

Among them, Waymo provides RoboTaxi services through Waymo One in Phoenix, California and other places. It has just announced that it will remove safety guards in Phoenix. The next step may be to gradually remove safety guards from Waymo’s autonomous driving rentals. Remove it from the car and head towards the road to profitability. Aptiv has cooperated with Lyft, a competitor of Uber in the United States, to provide RoboTaxi services with safety guards in Las Vegas. As a tourist city, there is no shortage of early adopters to experience the ride-hailing software Lyft. During the CES held in January every year, There are a lot of check-in experiences for technology practitioners. Cruise's RoboTaxi service is still in the early stages of serving its own employees. In San Francisco, USA, Cruise employees can call for a ride through the Cruise Anywhere APP. Compared with Waymo and Aptiv, Cruise's RoboTaxi service is not ready to be opened to the outside world, and the service previously planned to be launched at the end of 2019 has been postponed indefinitely. With the acquisition of a fully driverless test license, Cruise may accelerate the launch of its services.

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In China, RoboTaxi player representatives include technology company representatives Baidu, travel company representatives Didi Autonomous Driving, and start-up company representatives Pony.ai, WeRide, Auto?X and Yuanrong Qi OK and so on. It is worth mentioning that except for the founder of Auto? Currently, Baidu provides RoboTaxi services in Beijing, Great Wall and Cangzhou, making it the company that provides RoboTaxi services in the most cities in China. Users can request a ride through apps or mini-programs such as Baidu Maps and Apollo Go. Due to regulatory requirements, Baidu, like all domestic RoboTaxi players, has safety officers in its RoboTaxi services provided to the public. Judging from the current progress, fully driverless taxi services will also be available in the near future.

In addition to Baidu providing RoboTaxi services in Beijing, Changsha, and Cangzhou, Didi Autonomous Driving and Auto?X are in Shanghai, and WeRide is in Guangzhou, all of which provide RoboTaxi services in one city. Providing RoboTaxi services in different cities will help to exercise the applicability of autonomous driving technology. This is an indispensable step for future large-scale applications. After all, from south to north in China, the climate environment, traffic habits, etc. between cities are different. big difference.

02? Comparison of RoboTaxi commercialization routes in China and the United States

Waymo’s predecessor, the Google It has a history of 11 years now. In the past 11 years, autonomous driving in the United States has been following the route of bicycle intelligence, while Chinese autonomous driving began to imitate the bicycle intelligence of the United States and gradually developed into a vehicle-road-cloud integration path.

Currently, whether it is Waymo, Cruise, Aptiv, Tesla, etc., or other American start-ups Aurora, Nuro, etc., they all adopt the intelligent self-driving route of bicycles, that is, letting the car drive itself, but This route is of little help in building smart transportation and smart cities. The limit of bicycle intelligence is that experienced human drivers will never be able to perform intelligent traffic dispatch. ?

Starting from 2020, China has clearly proposed seven major areas: 5G, UHV, intercity high-speed railway and urban rail transit, new energy vehicle charging piles, big data centers, artificial intelligence, and industrial Internet. As the core new infrastructure, the total investment scale is 10 trillion.

5G, new energy vehicle charging piles, big data centers, artificial intelligence, etc. in the new infrastructure are all considered to be closely related to the commercialization of autonomous driving. At the same time, in China, a consensus has been formed on the direction of the autonomous driving technology route of smart cars + smart roads + cloud-based vehicle-road collaboration.

Especially for autonomous driving application fields such as RoboTaxi, which pay special attention to passenger safety, it is necessary to realize real-time monitoring of routes of fully autonomous vehicles, and to be prepared to take over autonomous vehicles in the cloud. Avoid accidents that may occur due to malfunction or hacker attacks.

Under the idea of ??new infrastructure, local governments, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Changsha, Cangzhou and other places, have built intelligent connected vehicle demonstration zones within their jurisdictions to support Autonomous driving companies conduct various types of autonomous driving tests within the demonstration area, among which RoboTaxi has also become the protagonist of the demonstration area.

Che Zhijun has also intensively tested RoboTaxi in various cities in recent months, including test vehicles or routes that have not yet been opened to the public. Judging from the test ride experience, the difference is mainly reflected in the details, including 1. ride comfort; 2. convenience of use; 3. safety and friendliness to other road participants.

For example, when Che Zhijun tried out the Apollo Go in Beijing, he found that the smoothness of the vehicle, which affects ride comfort, was very good in starting, turning, and parking, and he was driven by an experienced driver. feel.

In terms of safety and friendliness to other road participants, for example, when encountering a bicycle crossing the road, or a tricycle changing lanes to encroach on the route of a self-driving vehicle, or competing with a delivery boy when turning. When passing the right, Baidu's self-driving vehicles can make good predictions, allowing bicycles to cross the road safely, keeping a safe distance from tricycles to ensure that no accidents occur, accelerating to overtake after confirming that tricycles do not affect their own safety, and decelerating in advance for takeaways. The boys exchanged games, and the delivery boy passed first when he stopped to give way. In terms of the convenience of use, there is one detail that impressed Che Zhijun. When parking on the side of the road, due to the parking of bicycles on the sidewalk, it is easy for the parked vehicles to open the door and scratch the bicycle. However, Baidu Apollo’s When a self-driving vehicle stops, you can open the door comfortably without worrying about scratches. This could be a coincidence or a technicality.

03? How does the market reward the promoters of their efforts?

In the future, once autonomous driving is commercialized, who can benefit the most from it? There is no doubt that the players with the core capabilities of autonomous driving software and hardware, the players who contribute the most, or the players who take it all will gain the greatest benefits.

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Baidu currently has the algorithm capabilities for autonomous driving, the intelligent roads and cloud services required for autonomous driving through self-research. In the future, it will use these core competitiveness to directly provide 2C services. Whether it is transportation capacity services or 2B providing technical services as a supplier, it is possible to obtain the greatest benefits from the commercialization of autonomous driving. Regarding the commercialization of technical services provided by 2B suppliers, WM Motor's mass-produced models launched next year will be equipped with AVP autonomous parking technology provided by Baidu.

It should be noted that the commercialization of RoboTaxi is destined to be a long process. This cycle may be 5-10 years. This requires strong strategic focus and firm investment to be successful. The market is there, it just depends on who has the chance to capture it first. Currently, Baidu is in the leading position with its years of accumulation. ?

But the market does not give back to these companies that are working hard. For listed companies that aspire to RoboTaxi, whether they are technology companies or car companies, the representative of technology companies is Baidu, and the representative of car companies is Baidu. Tesla. Every progress of RoboTaxi will be recognized by capital in the secondary market, thereby increasing its market value. ?

After Baidu officially announced that it would provide RoboTaxi services in Beijing on October 10, the stock price of Baidu, which is listed in the United States, rose. The increase was as high as 10% in a single day, and the stock price hit a recent high. For Tesla, it hopes to eventually achieve FSD (fully self-driving) through the iteration of AutoPilot, and thus launch the RoboTaxi service so that owners of vehicles can go out and run taxis to make money during their idle time. Musk's idea is great, but the process of realizing it is destined to be arduous. On the road to finally realizing FSD and launching RoboTaxi, every improvement in AutoPilot has been reflected or over-reflected in Tesla’s stock price. This is why Tesla’s stock price has quadrupled this year. The latest news is that Musk said that a limited amount of fully autonomous driving test software will be launched next week. ?

For non-listed companies, especially start-up companies that are still burning money and have no ability to make new investments, every milestone will be seen by investors in the primary market, which may eventually lead to These investors with capital vote with their money to support the commercialization of the RoboTaxi industry.

RoboTaxi players in China and the United States are working hard to promote the commercialization of RoboTaxi. With hard workers and a direction, the results can be expected. We are all looking forward to the arrival of RoboTaxi and a safer, more convenient and more efficient way to travel. ?

For Chinese RoboTaxi players, with the support of new infrastructure, it is possible to better realize the large-scale commercial operation of RoboTaxi in China, which is recognized to have a more complex road environment than the United States. .

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.