Geely Aiming To Mass Produce Fully Autonomous EVs
Geely’s joint venture will release the limited edition Robo-01
In October 2022, a Chinese startup company, Jidu, entered a joint venture (JV) with a familiar Chinese automaker in Malaysia, Geely and the two carmakers are backed by China’s AI giant, Baidu, to mass produce a fully autonomous self-driving electric vehicle (EV), which they call the Robo-01 and is set to release in 2023.
The Robo-01 is said to cost around USD55,000 and is a limited edition car which is co-branded with China’s Lunar Exploration Project so this JV Geely car will feature two lidars, a 5mm range radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors and 12 high definition cameras. Talk about super futuristic.
Moreover, the Robo-01will be the first vehicle equipped with AI-assisted voice recognition with voice response speeds within 700 milliseconds as a result of its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip. With this car, Jidu and Geely are set to truly rival Tesla, could this be the final nail in the coffin for the American EV maker?
What’s more, Jidu had live streamed the unveiling of the Robo-01 and while the live stream was in Mandarin, the CEO of Jidu, Joe Xia, did say “It’s a car, and, even more so, a robot. It can become the standard for self-driving cars.” Note that this is a translation from CNBC.
While this is a massive achievement for sure, until the car has been reviewed on the road, there is no way to tell for sure just how advanced or safe the autonomous in the Robo-01 really is. Also when the Geely car was launched it was said to be offered with “high-level autonomous driving,” instead of level 4 like what many expect.
On top of that, China has not yet established any laws or regulations pertaining to autonomous vehicles for the consumer market just yet, so perhaps this is the reason for the vague choice of words used during the livestream unveiling of the Robo-01. At least for the current moment, the law states that the driver needs to be in control of the vehicle.
Additionally, in September 2022, Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li, stated that since the driver is expected to be in control of the vehicle, carmakers often utilize lower levels of autonomous driving to be free from blame in the event of a crash while with level 4 technology, the carmaker, in this case Geely, would be blamed.
Regardless, the unveiling of the Robo-01 marks a huge change in the automotive industry, not just for Geely, Baidu, Jidu or China in general, but for the whole world that shows that the average consumer is now more willing than ever to fully embrace autonomous driving.
We got all this from IEEE Spectrum and their full article is linked here. Thank you IEEE Spectrum for the information and image.
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