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our reporter suo hanxue reports from guiyang

baidu's (nasdaq: bidu, 09888.hk) autonomous driving travel service platform "luobokuaipao" driverless taxi has attracted widespread attention.

a reporter from china business news learned at the guizhou big data expo that many cities have contacted luobo kuaipao, hoping to become its pilot cities. next year, luobo kuaipao may conduct large-scale pilots in 3 to 5 cities.

when asked about the requirements for selecting pilot cities, relevant personnel told reporters: "we will consider extreme cold conditions and complex road conditions like chongqing. we will select some cities with representative characteristics to facilitate our technology improvement and improve our products."

evaluating cities

on august 28, 2024, baidu's dynamic model of the vehicle-road-cloud integrated solution was unveiled at the china international big data expo. it is understood that the vehicle-road-cloud integrated solution is built by leveraging baidu's forward-looking advantages in human, vehicle, road, and map technologies.

when talking about the operation of "luobokuaipao", a baidu representative told reporters that many cities are now talking to them and they are also screening each city.

regarding the screening criteria, the person added: "we are now evaluating from the perspective of safety and applicable scenarios, because the terrain and road conditions in each city are different, and administrative regulations may also require some breakthroughs."

the insider revealed: "we think there may be three to five cities that will conduct large-scale pilot projects next year. currently, we are already running trials in wuhan and beijing yizhuang."

it is reported that luobo kuaipao has opened manned test operation services in 11 cities, and has carried out fully unmanned autonomous driving travel service tests in beijing, wuhan, chongqing, shenzhen and shanghai.

on august 22, baidu disclosed its 2024 semi-annual report, showing that the total revenue in the second quarter was 33.9 billion yuan, and baidu's core revenue was 26.7 billion yuan. at the same time, baidu's core operating profit was 5.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23%.

in the second quarter, baidu's autonomous driving service, luobokuaipao, provided about 899,000 autonomous driving orders, a year-on-year increase of 26%. as of july 28, 2024, luobokuaipao has provided more than 7 million autonomous driving travel service orders to the public.

on the evening of august 22, at baidu's second quarter 2024 earnings conference call, baidu founder, chairman and ceo robin li disclosed: "at present, the business focus of luobo kuaipao is still to achieve a break-even in key cities. in the long run, our goal is to innovate through light asset models such as technology licensing to seize market opportunities."

li yanhong said: "we are constantly reducing costs through innovation. with the large-scale testing of the sixth-generation apollo rt6 driverless car, we expect that the rt6 model will bring about sustained cost reduction after it is officially put into operation."

challenging extreme weather

it is understood that the car-road-cloud solution currently promoted by baidu will be oriented to more imaginative driving scenarios in the future. "in the past, cars looked at the lights, but now we will look at the lights to ensure the highest traffic efficiency in the city." the aforementioned baidu person told reporters, "at the same time, unmanned vehicle driving can also solve the problem of 'ghosts', obtain information beyond the car's field of vision at a long distance, and feed back signals to the vehicle in advance through road test equipment, so that the car can predict the road conditions and risks ahead in advance, greatly avoiding the occurrence of traffic accidents."

baidu has made a bolder assumption about the scenarios of car driving. the person said: "if everything is self-driving in the future, we can coordinate between cars, and our road test equipment will know in advance. the driving trajectory of this car can be used to optimize the timing of traffic lights in advance, greatly improving the traffic operation efficiency of our city."

looking at the present, luobo kuaipao is actively improving its technical capabilities.

when the reporter asked what requirements luobo kuaipao had for the pilot cities, the aforementioned baidu person said that they would now consider the characteristics of the cities, such as the extremely cold weather in the north, the complex road conditions like in chongqing, and frequent rainstorms.

he said: "the choice of each location has nothing to do with the north or south, but the traffic characteristics of the city itself. we will select some cities with representative characteristics to facilitate our technology improvement and improve our products."

(editor: hao cheng, reviewer: wu kezhong, proofreader: yan jingning)