Chinese manufacturer Baidu has unveiled a new sixth-generation unmanned vehicle with a detachable steering wheel. The company is ready to start producing and using the Apollo RT6 as a taxi from 2023, a year earlier than Tesla. This is reported TechCrunch. Baidu, the owner of China’s largest search engine, has valued the new model at about $37,000, almost half the cost of the previous version of the car with a conventional steering wheel.
“We are moving towards a future where robot taxis cost half as much as taxis today,” said Robin Li, co-founder and CEO of Baidu. He also noted that the cost cuts would allow the company to produce tens of thousands of autonomous vehicles.
The company opened a self-driving taxi zone in Beijing in November 2021. And in April of this year, Baidu, along with self-driving technology startup Pony.ai, got the first license in the country for the provision of unmanned taxi services to the population.
Automotive manufacturers worldwide are aiming to bring their self-driving technology into commercial use as early as possible. However, they have yet to convince the Chinese and US governments to allow fully automatic vehicles.
Tesla plans to begin mass production of robot taxis in 2024, announced Elon Musk during an April call with analysts.
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