(CNN Business)Technology giant Baidu will operate fully autonomous taxis without human assistants on Monday announced that it had obtained permission . In his two big cities in China, he will be aboard and will be the first in the country.
Baidu, which operates China's largest search engine, said its autonomous ride-hailing service Apollo Go has received regulatory approval to operate on public roads in Chongqing and Wuhan during daylight hours. The population of these cities is about 30 million and he 11 million respectively.
The move is a notable step forward for Baidu and represents a possible shift in China's comfort with this new technology. In other cities where the company's robo-taxis are in operation, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, Baidu has to place human safety operators in the vehicles.
"The moment the industry has been waiting for has finally arrived," Wei Dong, vice president and chief safety operations officer of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Group, said in a statement Monday. rice field. “We believe these permits are important milestones on the road to the inflection point where the industry can finally deploy fully autonomous services at scale.”
, Baidu will be able to offer fully self-driving robo-taxis services in designated areas in Wuhan from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm local time and in Chongqing from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm local time. However, services will be limited at first, and he will only have 5 robo-taxis operating in each city.
