Baidu starts testing self-driving cars in China

Baidu has said it will begin testing its self-driving cars on public roads. In the Chinese city of Changsha, 45 cars of the company will be tested in the coming period, which have been developed in collaboration with the automaker FAW Group.

The South China Morning Post reported this on the basis of statements from Chinese technology giant Baidu. In Changsha, the capital of the Hunan province, the 45 cars will be used as a self-driving taxi, called the Apollo Robotaxi, in which a human driver is still present to intervene if necessary.

For the time being, the test area is limited to roads with a total length of 50 kilometers. If all goes well, this will be expanded to a road network totaling 84 kilometers in the near future. The car that has to drive these stretches of road is the Hongqi, made by the Chinese FAW Group. Baidu claims that the car can drive level 4 autonomously, which is just one step away from fully autonomous. This means that in the vast majority of cases the car should be able to handle its journeys independently.

Baidu has been working on self-driving car technology for some time now. To this end, it works together with car manufacturers, mainly Chinese companies. Incidentally, Volvo, which has a Chinese parent company, is also working with Baidu to make self-driving cars that can drive level 4 autonomously.