Baidu Inc’s Apollo RT6 Autonomous Vehicle Unveiled With No Steering Wheel

The Apollo RT6, an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) recently unveiled by China's search engine giant Baidu Inc, seems to be a promising prospect for production.

According to the company, it has plans to use it for its robotaxi service in China next year, even though it sounds a little far-fetched coming without a steering wheel.

Fitted with 8 lidars and 12 cameras alongside the AV, it will utilize the autonomous Level 4 capabilities, which need no human intervention whatsoever.

For context, Lidars are detection systems, akin to radars that use pulsed laser light rather than radio waves.

Stated Baidu’s Senior Vice President Li Zhenyu, the AV will hit the roads without a steering wheel once Chinese authorities approve it. 

Plus, the driving capability of Baidu's new AV can match a skilled human driver with over 20 years of experience, he added.

Pricing-wise, the cost per unit for the new model will drop to CNY 250,000 (RM 164,662), compared with CNY 480,000 (RM 316,467) for the previous generation.

Baidu's chief executive officer, Robin Li, concluded, “This massive cost reduction will enable us to deploy tens of thousands of AVs across China, and we are moving towards a future, where taking a robotaxi will be half the cost of taking a taxi today.”