The company intends to provide 10 autonomous vehicles without drivers behind the steering wheel to serve passengers in a designated area of 60km2

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Baidu allowed to remove a safety operator from the driver's seat for its autonomous ride hailing services in Beijing. (Credit: Baidu, Inc.)

Baidu has secured permits in China that allows it to offer driverless ride-hailing services to people on open roads in the Chinese capital Beijing.

The Chinese technology company obtained the permits from the head office of the Beijing High-level Automated Driving Demonstration Area (BJHAD).

Baidu plans to provide 10 autonomous vehicles without drivers behind the steering wheel to serve passengers in a designated area of 60km2.

According to Baidu, the licensed cars will join an existing fleet offered by Apollo Go, the company’s autonomous ride-hailing service in Beijing.

From today onwards, users can hail a driverless ride with the help of the Apollo Go mobile app in daytime from 10:00 to 16:00, said Baidu.

The internet company intends to introduce 30 more autonomous vehicles at a later stage to grow its fleet to offer more driverless services to the public.

The company stated: “The new permit represents Beijing’s collaborative and safety-first approach to autonomous vehicle regulation, progressing from the manned autonomous driving stage to the driverless stage. It also represents a benchmark regulation for the global autonomous vehicle industry, given the complexity and high density of urban traffic in Beijing.

“Baidu’s success in securing this regulatory permission can be attributed to its strong foundation in AI and its leading test-drive mileage.”

In late 2020, the company became the first to offer autonomous ride-hailing services in Beijing. Last year, around this time, it had introduced fully driverless paid robotaxi services in Beijing in order to demonstrate a new commercialisation model for autonomous driving.

Since last November, the company has been charging fees for the Apollo Go autonomous services provided to the public under granted commercial permits. For these, safety operators are needed to be present in the driver’s seat.

Ever since its first launch in 2020, Apollo Go is said to have grown to nine Chinese cities, which include all the first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and five other cities, namely Chongqing, Cangzhou, Changsha, Wuzhen, and Yangquan.