In October, a startup called Jidu Automotive, backed by Chinese AI giant Baidu and Chinese carmaker Geely, officially released an autonomous electric car, the Robo-01 Lunar Edition. In 2023, the car will go on sale.
At roughly US $55,000, the Robo-01 Lunar Edition is a limited edition, cobranded with China’s Lunar Exploration Project. It has two lidars, a 5-millimeter-wave radars, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and 12 high-definition cameras. It is the first vehicle to offer on-board, AI-assisted voice recognition, with voice response speeds within 700 milliseconds, thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip.
This article is part of our special report
Top Tech 2023.
“It’s a car, and, even more so, a robot,” said Jidu CEO Joe Xia, during the live-streamed unveiling of the car (as translated from the Mandarin by CNBC). He added that it “can become the standard for self-driving cars.”
But just how autonomous the car is remains to be seen: In January 2022 Baidu and Jidu said the car would have Level 4 autonomous driving capability, which does not require a human driver to control the vehicle. But the press release at the car’s launch made no mention of Level 4, saying only that the car offered “high-level autonomous driving.”
The blurred language may have been dictated by lawyers. China has yet to establish laws or regulations governing autonomous vehicles for the consumer market. For the time being, a driver must remain in control of the car. In September 2022, Baidu cofounder and CEO Robin Li noted that lower levels of autonomy shield car companies from liability in the event of a crash, because the driver is expected to be in control. With Level 4, the manufacturer of the car or the operator of the “robotaxi” service using the car would be to blame.
Nonetheless, the Robo-01 launch signals a dramatic shift in the automotive industry, which has been slow to adopt electric cars and even slower to embrace autonomy. No other consumer car on the market yet offers Level 4 autonomy. Tesla’s Full Self Driving ability, despite its fancy name and the pronouncements of its CEO, is only Level 2, or “partial automated driving” under the definition of SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers). Other autonomous-vehicle makers, including Tesla, are collecting data from mass-produced L2 vehicles to train L4 algorithms.
“It’s a car, and, even more so, a robot,” said Jidu CEO Joe Xia.
Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz is offering its Drive Pilot Level 3 autonomous driving system on S-Class and EQS sedans in Germany. Level 3 handles all aspects of driving, but it requires that the driver remain ready to regain control if requested. Drivers need not keep their eyes on the road, but Drive Pilot will disengage if the driver’s face is obscured.
That raises the question of what Robo-01 can do that the Mercedes Drive Pilot cannot. And what features will Robo-01 use to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel, as required under current Chinese law? Answers to those questions may have to wait until Robo-01 ships.
Regardless of the car’s official autonomy designation, Baidu has billed its self-driving package, Apollo, as having Level 4 capabilities. That includes what the company calls a Point-to-Point Autopilot, designed to handle highway, city street, and parking scenarios. Jidu is conducting further tests in Beijing and Shanghai to ensure that its Point-to-Point Autopilot will cover all major cities in China.
The absence of a steering wheel is a statement in itself.
Chinese regulations do allow Level 4 in robotaxis that operate within designated geofenced areas, and Apollo has already shown what it can do in Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis, which have delivered more than 1 million rides in at least 10 cities across China. Baidu recently unveiled its latest autonomous robotaxi, the Level-4 Apollo RT6, which has a detachable steering wheel. The absence of a steering wheel is a statement in itself, and it frees up cabin space for extra seating or even desktops, gaming consoles, and vending machines.
China could well become the world’s largest market for autonomous vehicles, with fully autonomous vehicles accounting for more than 40 percent of the country’s new vehicle sales in 2040, and 12 percent of the vehicle installed base, according to global consulting firm McKinsey.
In 2018, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transportation, published standards for setting up road-test facilities for intelligent automobiles. Soon after, provinces and cities across China began setting up their own road-testing facilities.
Of the many Chinese companies already preparing to enter the autonomous vehicle market, Baidu is the biggest player. Its Apollo open-source software development platform launched in 2017. Two years later, the company was granted the first Level 4 road-test licenses in the country. More recently it received fully driverless permits in Wuhan and Chongqing, making Baidu the only company of its kind in China to provide ride-hailing services without any human drivers present in the car, as Waymo does in Phoenix and Cruise does in San Francisco. Meanwhile, its Abolong L4 Autonomous Bus is operating commercially in enclosed campuses in at least 24 Chinese cities.
The Robo-01 is powered by a 100-kilowatt-hour lithium battery from Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) in about 4 seconds and can go 600 km on a charge.
So, the car can drive far, and it can drive fast. But can it drive itself? We’ll find out in 2023.
This article appears in the January 2023 print issue as “Baidu and Geely Will Mass-Produce an Autonomous EV.”This article was updated on 6 December 2022.
Top Tech 2023
Top Tech 2023: A Special ReportPreview exciting technical developments for the coming year.Can This Company Dominate Green Hydrogen?Fortescue will need more electricity-generating capacity than France.An Airship ResurgencePathfinder 1 could herald a new era for zeppelinsA New Way to Speed Up ComputingBlue microLEDs bring optical fiber to the processor.The Personal-Use eVTOL Is (Almost) HereOpener’s BlackFly is a pulp-fiction fever dream with wings.Baidu Will Make an Autonomous EVIts partnership with Geely aims at full self-driving mode.China Builds New Breeder ReactorsThe power plants could also make weapons-grade plutonium.Economics Drives a Ray-Gun ResurgenceLasers should be cheap enough to use against drones.A Cryptocurrency for the Masses or a Universal ID?What Worldcoin’s killer app will be is not yet clear.IBM’s Quantum LeapThe company’s Condor chip will boast more than 1,000 qubits.Arthritis Gets a JoltVagus-nerve stimulation promises to help treat autoimmune disorders.Smartphones Become SatphonesNew satellites can connect directly to your phone.Exascale Comes to EuropeThe E.U.’s first exascale supercomputer will be built in Germany.The Short ListA dozen more tech milestones to watch for in 2023.From Your Site ArticlesToyota Becomes Largest Car Company to Test Driverless Cars on Public Roads ›People Want Driverless Cars with Utilitarian Ethics, Unless They're a Passenger ›Deep Learning Makes Driverless Cars Better at Spotting Pedestrians ›Making Driverless Cars More Expressive ›Related Articles Around the WebSelf-driving cars were supposed to take over the road. What ... ›Cars That Are Almost Self-Driving in 2022 | U.S. News ›Are we going too fast on driverless cars? | Science | AAAS ›
Magazines love to dabble in prognostication, particularly when it comes to emerging technology. Startups show such futuristic pronouncements to potential investors, who in turn use them as data points to inform their bets. And as readers, we gravitate toward them, if only so we can feel superior when, say, a highly anticipated product launch bombs—chef’s kiss to Mark Zuckerberg for the schadenfreude fest that is the metaverse. Think of IEEESpectrum’s annual technology forecast as prognostication filtered through a skeptical lens and years of ongoing coverage of technological advances from lab to market. Each January, we look at projects across the globe and from a range of engineering disciplines that will have major milestones in the coming year. While some technologies flop and fade away, others produce multiple hype cycles that raise and then dash hopes again and again. Take flying cars. Back in 2007, we predicted that the flying-car startup Terrafugia would fail. The company lurched along for years until finally ceasing U.S. operations in 2021, ironically just after receiving a Special Light-Sport Aircraft airworthiness certificate from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. But as we wrote in 2014, flying cars are an idea that will not die. And even though the road—or the flight path—to commercial success is riddled with regulatory and social obstacles, eVTOLs (a newer and less sullied, acronym-a-licious moniker for flying cars) have attracted billions of dollars in investment in recent years. And now, the sector seems poised to finally take off, as Editorial Director of Content Development Glenn Zorpette reports in his story about Opener’s BlackFly eVTOL. Flying cars illustrate one path that emerging technologies follow, with innovators and investors taking chances and failing early on. True believers learn from those failures, ultimately leading to solutions that are then brought to market. Sometimes, though, externalities like a changing climate fast-track technologies that have been languishing in development for decades. Back in 2001, Senior Editor Michael J. Riezenman wrote about hydrogen fuel cells as a promising answer to long-haul transportation needs. Back then, the hydrogen economy seemed right around the corner. Fast-forward 22 years and Contributing Editor Peter Fairley reports on two Australian companies that aim to use hydrogen to make a big dent in the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions. One company is using renewable energy to produce hydrogen as fuel for huge trucks to haul zinc ore. The other is developing a new generation of electrolyzers to produce hydrogen for export, although exactly how that will work has yet to be determined. Thank the pressures of the climate crisis for this green-hydrogen boom. Cryptocurrencies, which we’ve been covering since they emerged, have imploded over the last several months. This crypto winter has soured many people on that particular application of blockchain technology, but there are many other, perhaps more promising ways to apply a blockchain. One is as a means of providing proof of personhood, as the journalist Edd Gent explores in his critical look at Worldcoin. The company’s founders want Worldcoin to be not only a global currency that will somehow redistribute wealth via universal basic income but also a secure means of biometric identification, with a dose of buzzy, Web3 facilitation thrown in for good measure. And so, while crypto is tanking and the NFT market has fizzled, something useful may yet rise from the ashes of Web3. I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that Web3 will be recalled in years to come as a figment of some collective pandemic fever dream. Check back in a few years to see how that prognostication pans out. Meanwhile, have some fun with this issue. And for IEEE members, enjoy your exclusive member benefit: online access to our feature archives going back to 2000. Log in to the Spectrum website to trace how technologies like lidar and microLEDs have developed into components that now enable other technologies—a new generation of blimps and optical interconnects for chiplets, respectively—which are also featured in this issue.From Your Site Articles10 Lessons From the Legacy of Apple’s Steve Jobs ›Top Tech 2022: A Special Report ›January 2023 - IEEE Spectrum ›Related Articles Around the WebThe 7 Fundamentals for Succeeding in Innovation ... ›Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Innovation? | On Point ›The eight essentials of innovation | McKinsey ›Keep Reading ↓Show less
This is a sponsored article brought to you by NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
The collection of technologies and markets that comprise so-called
"shared mobility" now constitutes a $60 billion market, according to some estimates. This enormous growth has at least in part been driven by the aim of reducing vehicle carbon emissions to address climate change concerns.
In order for shared mobility to realize its aim of reducing pollution, there are a number of urban transportation elements that need to be taken into account, including car sharing services and micromobility offerings, such as e-bikes and scooters.
As these shared mobility markets mature and develop,
C2SMART, a U.S. Department of Transportation Tier 1 University Transportation Center at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering comprised of a consortium of universities, is leading research efforts to optimize these technologies to make them effective and efficient for our lives and our environments.
Researchers at NYU have been at the forefront of much of C2SMART's contributions since first applying to be part of the
U.S. federal government's University Transportation Centers program back in 2016. Since that time, the C2SMART Center at NYU has worked with shared mobility companies including, BMW ReachNow (now ShareNow), Lime and Via, and collaborated with automakers such as Ford Motor Company on some of its research.
"The goal of the Center is primarily to tackle some of the most pressing issues that we see in mobility and in cities today and be able to come up with new solutions"
"The goal of the Center is primarily to tackle some of the most pressing issues that we see in mobility and in cities today and be able to come up with new solutions," said
Joseph Chow, Institute Associate Professor at NYU Tandon's Department of Civil and Urban Engineering and co-founding Deputy Director of C2SMART.
Chow sees the Center as kind of bridge between local government agencies as well as the many private mobility companies and providers. "They come to us with problems and challenges that they see, and we try to come up with new solutions," added Chow.
The agenda for the Center is driven in part by an annual Request for Proposal (RFP) process and partly from partnerships arranged with local agencies and private companies, according to Chow. As an example, C2SMART formed an on-call relationship with NYS DOT and for one of their tasks they are providing support in updating the
New York 511 Rideshare program, which is a demand management system that has been in place for a few years now. "They want to update the program to next-generation technology that might consider more mobility services throughout the state to address equity needs as environmental needs," noted Chow.
Joseph Chow, Institute Associate Professor at NYU Tandon's Department of Civil and Urban Engineering and co-founding Deputy Director of C2SMART.NYU Tandon
Chow has focused some his recent research on developing the infrastructure for charging electric vehicles throughout New York City. While prior to this work there had been a lot of studies examining EV charging station locations, the charging considerations for mobility services tend to be trickier because they're on-demand, so their locations are not as known in advance.
Chow and his colleagues addressed this problem by developing a look-ahead policy so that the model uses current data to anticipate where the future demand will be, taking into account the capacity at the different charging stations. This accounting for the capacity is a key difference from previous approaches.
This new feature allows for the designing of different mixes of charger types and sizing of the charging stations. By being able to accommodate all these different sizing alternatives the model makes it possible to focus on different geographic locations, and changing the amount of capacity at these locations. Chow and his team collaborated with BMW ReachNow on this work, prior to the company merging with Car2Go.
The Micromobility Phenomenon
In another line of research, Chow has recently been working in the area of micromobility, a category of transit comprising e-scooters, mopeds, bicycles and the like, that has grown in popularity in cities around the world. In fact,
Chow's recent research coincides with a current pilot e-scooter program in New York City.
Acknowledging the rapid growth of e-scooter adoption, the NYU researchers looked specifically at the role that these vehicles play for the first and last mile in connecting travelers to public transit. The results support a relationship between how people use public transit and e-scooters, which bodes well for them reducing the number of cars in urban environments.
NYU researchers discovered in their data analysis that one way that e-scooters will reduce cars is that fewer people will use carpooling from public transit hubs. The substitution of e-scooters for carpooling means that there might be less people dropping other people off because there will be e-scooters available. Taxis were also another mode of transport that looked to be displaced by e-scooters, albeit to a smaller extent.
"This means that there'll be less need for vehicles, at least for short-distance trips," said Chow. "What we could witness in the long term might be a shift in the mode distribution by distance. For short-distance trips, you'll see e-scooters insert themselves into that spectrum."
Micromobility, electric bikes, and EVs are among the topics tackled by researchers at the C2SMART Center at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.Karl Philip Greenberg
Chow recognizes that in the future there still will be a strong dependency on automobiles when used in conjunction with conventional fixed rail transit. However, he believes this might change if transit agencies consider running more on-demand services and micromobility. "In the long term, I think this would help to reduce the car and vehicle miles traveled, which would help to reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions," he added.
While micromobility is a phenomenon currently taking hold in cities around the world, there's another emerging service called Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), in which a platform provider forms a single gateway to process multiple different options of trips into just different packages that people can purchase. This service is somewhat akin to how airlines have evolved, according to Chow.
"Years ago, it was just individual airlines competing with each other," explained Chow. "But nowadays, when you book a trip, that single trip might be operated by three different airlines. As we head towards that in our public transit, I think there will be a bigger role to manage the demand through pricing and then try to make it more equitable for people."
Along these lines, Chow highlighted the work his team has done with Italian start-up,
NEXT Future Transportation, which offers modular, self-driving modules that look somewhat like a bus divided into smaller pods. This particular solution addresses one of the main problems in public transit of needing one or more transfers to get to your destination. This technology essentially allows passengers to transfer within the vehicle and then they can disband and go separate ways to be dropped off where they need to go. Chow's lab has studied methods to operate such systems as a transit service, including a recent award from the National Science Foundation.
"Imagine a bracelet, and the different links in the bracelet are algorithmically programmed to go the last mile to a different neighborhood," explained Chow. "You just go to the link in the bracelet that'll take you to your neighborhood based on where you want to go, but you're going to go with other people who are going to that area."
From Your Site ArticlesElectric Motor Enables Chain-Free Bike-by-Wire - IEEE Spectrum ›Two e-Bikes to Consider for the Post-Pandemic Commute - IEEE ... ›A DIY E-bike Conversion on the Cheap - IEEE Spectrum ›NYU Researchers Paving New Path for Robotics ›AI Tool for COVID Monitoring Offers Solution for Urban Congestion - IEEE Spectrum ›Related Articles Around the WebC2SMART Home – Connected Cities for Smart Mobility toward ... ›Joseph Chow | NYU Tandon School of Engineering ›NYU Tandon School of Engineering: Home ›Keep Reading ↓Show less
