Baidu starts paid robotaxi service in China

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Baidu has finally moved to having a paid robotaxi service with no employee in the car. While they have remote monitoring and even driving over 5G this is still a big step and a show of internal confidence in the vehicle.

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Baidu's Jidu Auto, the EV joint venture financed with partner Geely, held an inaugural partner conference today and both Baidu chief executive Robin Li and Jidu chief executive Joe Xia Yiping along with executives from Jidu made signficant announcements in statements and in person at the conference.

from pan daily yesterday - fascinating

In February this year, TuSimple reached an agreement with U.S. authorities to transfer some technical oversight of its selfdriving trucking operations to the U.S. government. It will also adopt a technology control plan to limit access to the company’s selfdriving data in China, including the source code and algorithms.

Why does the VW Sedric graphic appear on the top header of Mobileyes Self Driving MaaS Solution page called Self-Driving Mobility Services?

If Argo is partnered with VW on the ID Buzz robotaxi project, why would VW allow the Sedric rendering to be used on Mobileye's website for MaaS?

Rather strange.

Mobileye's Project Pinta (well documented publically) originally had VW as the platform provider before the NIO SUV substitution for round one.

Are VW and Mobileye still involved in a MaaS project?

The Mobileye presentation in the 2022 Intel Investor Day Meeting PDF has excellent background information except Sedric.

In MaaS slide, there is Holo, Ruter, Deutsche Bahn, Schaeffler, etc but no Sedric.

Deutsche Bahn is partnered with Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund for Germany’s largest on-demand service project (Darmstadt and Offenbach district) and the world’s first autonomous shuttle on-demand fleet in regular public transport operations.

Mobileye is to contribute the vehicle software for the project in the Rhine-Main region. Deutsche Bahn wants to integrate fully autonomous vehicles into local public transport in order to strengthen public transport throughout Germany.

Mobileye vehicles are also to be used as an on-demand service for routes that the railways currently do not cover, especially in rural areas.

On-demand transport can only be economically feasible if the service is an autonomous operation states VDV Vice President and RMV Managing Director Prof Knut Ringat.

That is now a current total of 6 MSA's Mobileye Drive will be live in Germany next year (and 2 more most likely to be added to list).

Since July 2022, Europcar has been owned by a consortium led by the VW Group.

Rimac Group, which includes the wholly owned EV components and chassis group Rimac Technology, and also a 45% stake in Bugatti Rimac, is involved with the udelv Transporter project according to the Intel Investor Day presentation (the chassis?).

Could JB Poindexter be pegged for the top-hat upper body box once volume production starts?.

last-mile/curbside autonomous delivery such as pod delivery - huh? lol what a dud.

yup. chief commercial officer now at
mPhase Technologies. another failing partnership of intel. no large
market for autonomous curbside delivery with an 18ft pod

MaaS of vw and mbly be idbuzz

BMW to Keynote at CES 2023.

Zipse will have to thread the needle carefully.

Rimac Automobili and its sister company Project 3 Mobility, are in charge of the robotaxi development that will be integrated with public transport.

The project has been under active development for the past several years. KIA Motors, a unit of carmaker Hyundai Motor Group, is already an investor and shareholder of Project 3 Mobility. A key partnership for Project 3 Mobility has been set up with Microsoft.

The goal is for the production of vehicles and a large number of components to be based in Croatia which would then export tens of thousands of units per year to locations where the Robotaxi service will be provided, Mate Rimac said in the statement.

Project 3 Mobility is in negotiations with some 20 cities in Europe and the Middle East to enable the robotaxi service, with Zagreb expected to be the first city to offer it in 2024.

The total amount of funds that will be invested in the pre-commercial phase of the project is 450 million euro.

We expect that much larger investments will be needed after the initial pre-commercial phase, which will also be collected from international investors, the company said in the press release issued following a visit by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen to the headquarters of Rimac Automobili in Sveta Nedelja.

Our CEO also explained that developing autonomous driving in an urban environment is highly complex, which is why the company decided to collaborate with a global company on its implementation in the P3 vehicles.

p3m dot com/media/control-nothing-political-team/

Project 3 Mobility system will be made for a wide range of users, but it will also have some interesting features.

For example, the user will be able to connect their calendar to the app, so that the robotaxi waits for them every morning in front of the building at a specific time. Also, they will be able to remotely adjust the seats, air conditioning, and many other things in the car. The benefits for cities from such a project are numerous, while research indicates that 9,500 robotaxis in a city the size of Milan can free up 30 percent of parking lots.

Microsoft and Apple references in job postings and partnerships pages.

"By the end of the year, we plan to increase the number of employees to more than 230, and in two years we will employ close to 1,000 people. The project is in many parts still in development, so we do not expose it to the public until we are ready to show our final product and service. Despite such an approach, we attract great interest from talents since we are working on demanding solutions for a completely new way of transport in cities. In P3, we want the time that was once considered lost, the time we spend on the road between different locations, to become the best used time and the right place to relax, have fun or work. The parts of the system we are building are an autonomous electric vehicle and platform, specialized infrastructure and complete service management software. We are currently talking to 19 cities that are interested in becoming our first partners where we will initially provide the service. All our activities will be closely coordinated with the cities because only by providing real value to the community can we achieve long-term cooperation. Every city is different, it has somewhat different needs and we are developing a service that will respond to a large part of those needs," said Marko Pejković, CEO of Project 3 Mobility.

Along with Zagreb, where the service is planned to be launched by the end of 2024, the company plans to provide services in over 100 cities across the world.

The total amount of funds that will be invested in the pre-commercial phase of the project is 450 million euro.

“We expect that much larger investments will be needed after the initial pre-commercial phase, which will also be collected from international investors,” the company said in the press release issued following a visit by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen to the headquarters of Rimac Automobili in Sveta Nedelja.

Project 3 fully corresponds to the objectives of Europe's Green Deal, 100% digital and 100% green, Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic noted in the press release.

Interview with Adriano Mudri

Adriano Mudri, former Director of Design at Rimac Automobili, is taking on a new role within the Rimac Group, becoming Chief Design Officer at Project 3 Mobility. He will be leading a team specifically dedicated to this transformative mobility service – currently operating in stealth mode – and overseeing the complete process from idea to public rollout.

... an ever-increasing amount of Adriano’s time has been spent working on the Rimac Group’s next revolution. Focused on the future of mobility, the company is currently operating in stealth mode, designing a highly complex product and service, with funding already secured from several high-profile global investors and plans to introduce it to the world in late 2024. ...

What we have planned next is an even larger technological leap but this time in a completely different challenge and goal. I am looking forward and very excited for the outcome of this new endeavor that we’ve taken on.

Noted some Project 3 Mobility Linkedin profiles dated mid 2019
eg
Paul Thomas, CTO, Project 3 Mobility

ZAGREB, 9 July 2021 – Rimac Automobili CEO Mate Rimac has presented his new project developing autonomous vehicles and is targeting the Croatian capital Zagreb as the first city to use Robotaxi service.

Rimac, who was visited yesterday by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at their headquarters in Sveta Nedelja, presented the project from sister company Project 3 Mobility.

The project for the development of vehicles and infrastructure for new mobility has been recognized as one of the national strategic projects in the transportation sector, which represents a great potential for the society and economy of Croatia in the coming period, as well as globally and has been selected among the projects to be presented to the Commission.

KIA Motors, a company that is a part of the Hyundai Motor Group, is already directly involved in the project, as an investor and shareholder of the company.

The total amount of funds that will be invested in the first, before the commercial phase of the project is 450M EUR, coming from foreign investors, such as KIA Motors, and others with whom negotiations are already in an advanced stage. We expect that much larger investments will be needed after the initial pre-commercial phase, which will also be collected from international investors. According to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, 200M EUR will be co-financed in the pre-commercial phase from EU Funds.

Rimac targets Zagreb as world’s first city to use Robotaxi service
Mate Rimac showing President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen around Rimac Automobili on Thursday (Photo: Rimac Automobili)

The project is actively in development for the past several years, its commercial phase, after intensive research and development is expected from the end of 2024.

“We were pleased to host the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, Andrej Plenković at Rimac Automobili and to present the project of our sister company P3 Mobility. On this occasion, we presented a new mobility project that we have been working on for several years. We are glad that it was recognized as a strategic project proposed to the placement of funds of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The future of mobility will change completely. The commercial phase of our project, after intensive research and development, is expected from the end of 2024. The first vehicle demonstrator was made last year and we’re working on various elements of overall services (mobility platform, vehicle, infrastructure). We have entered into a key partnership with a company such as KIA (also an investor in the project), Microsoft, autonomous software provider and many others. We are currently in negotiations with about 20 cities in Europe and the Middle East, which would be the first cities to be provided with a robotics service. We have already signed cooperation agreements with several cities, but our wish is for Zagreb to be the first city in the world where the service will be provided in 2024. The goal is to produce the vehicles and a large number of components in Croatia and export tens of thousands of units per year to locations where the Robotaxi service will be provided,” Mate Rimac, CEO of Rimac Automobiles and P3 Mobility said.

KIA, Microsoft, Infinum are only publically stated partners so far.

Nothing else about the other investors or partners alluded to.

With the information just posted above, and considering the
- timeline (3 years since Aug 2019 inception, late 2024 rollout)
- manpower (100th employee as of March 2022, plans to slot 130 more jobs by the end of 2022) only 230ish.
- robotaxi (AV design from ground up)
- core dev (apps, vehicle, infrastructure)
- skills (resume review on Linkedin)

putting a robotaxi on the road in just 2 years, by late 2024, requires additional and significant parterships. Even Musk stated Tesla has 300 engineers just designing Autopilot stack. Intel has 2500 at Mobileye for HW, SW, maps, sensors, silicon, etc.. Arriver has 1100 just for the sw stack. Aptiv has

To what extent KIA is more than a strategic investor and shareholder is not known.

A live launch by the end of 2024 two years from now, with Version 2 of the P3M prototype about to morph into the 3rd and final design soon (according to P3 website) implies some heavy partner lifting but by whom, Motional (Hyundai/Aptiv) ? or ..., ....

This cannot be that hard to figure out given the calendar is currently 3 years into a 5 year timeline to go live with (an autonomous) robotaxi.

Aptiv/Hyundai is the logical choice.

KEDGlobal - Aug 28
South Korea’s top automaker Hyundai Motor Co. has narrowed its technology gap in Level 3 self-driving vehicles with Tesla Inc. to one year, moving a step closer to fully autonomous cars.

The automaking unit of Hyundai Motor Group also said it aims to overtake Tesla in autonomous vehicles’ system computing speeds within the next few years.

At the recent Global Investors Conference hosted by Samsung Securities, Jang Woong-jun, head of Hyundai’s autonomous driving business, said the company’s self-driving technology gap with Tesla, which previously was years behind, has been narrowed to one year.

“Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) is ahead of us. But we’re confident we can overtake Tesla in the near future,” he said.

Industry officials said it’s the first time Hyundai has publicly mentioned its autonomous driving technology level compared to that of Tesla. ...

For example, the user will be able to connect their calendar to the app, so that the robotaxi waits for them every morning in front of the building at a specific time. Also, they will be able to remotely adjust the seats, air conditioning, and many other things in the car. The benefits for cities from such a project are numerous, while research indicates that 9,500 robotaxis in a city the size of Milan can free up 30 percent of parking lots

source - P3 Mobility website

No mention of the Project 3 Mobility robotaxi project in the USA press has to indicate something but not sure what. And to think Oliver Blume is the new CEO of VW and would have insight into the project given his dealings with Rimac. Scratch your head.

A fleet of 700 robotaxis targeted at first (just for Zagreb alone) with serial production starting 2024.

Zagreb public transport company ZET is perhaps the.

The second part of the project involves Zagreb public transport company ZET and includes the development and construction of infrastructure, which will be used for maintenance of the cars. The infrastructure should be part of a multimodal terminal in Zagreb. It will allow the ecosystem to connect to trams, buses and the suburban railway operated by public transport company ZET.
(app, vehicle, infrastructure)

The testing of the entire system is planned for 2023, and serial production of the autonomous cars is expected in 2024.

Development of the final (third) prototype may have been recently completed.

The serial production of the fleet of 700 E-vehicles should replace a large number of taxi vehicles in Zagreb.

Rimac Technology and Rimac Group.

www dot rimac-automobili dot com/media/press-releases/rimac-technology-officially-becomes-its-own-entity/

www dot rimac-technology dot com

www dot croatiaweek dot com/video-rimac-tests-autonomous-car-on-zagreb-roads.

Hyundai and Kia’s Future Mobility Development Team background -
tech dot hyundaimotorgroup dot com/article/a-highly-sophisticated-mobility-solution-made-with-new-patented-technologies/

Again, from Project 3 Mobility site -
Our CEO also explained that developing autonomous driving in an urban environment is highly complex, which is why the company decided to collaborate with a global company on its implementation in the P3 vehicles.

Still difficult to comprehend how P3 scales to 100 cities on a solid schedule (inc. Saudi Arabia and Singapore) without a global mapping partner and political connections.

huh?? This was in July 2018

from post -
Rimac Automobili currently has 12 people working on the autonomous driving project. ...,

.... Rimac is not interested in the development of robo-taxis, like Uber or Lyft, which in the future want to completely exclude drivers from their business model. As a manufacturer of supercars, Rimac is looking for technologies that would make driving safer and more exciting, and one such technology is the "Driver Coach" - a system that could, for example, find the ideal ways of accelerating, turning and braking on a race track, and then, a little bit by bit, taught the human driver how to achieve better performance.

novac dot jutarnji dot hr/novac/aktualno/rimac-ne-zelim-raditi-robotaksije-moji-ce-auti-vozace-uciti-sigurnoj-brzoj-voznji-7638954?

Baidu currently operates around 500 self-driving cars in China, with plans to expand that fleet to 3,000 vehicles in 30 cities by 2023.

Cariad world premiere tomorrow at MWC2023, 1.45 p.m., Industry City Stage, Barcelona

maybe ID.BUZZ starting homologation

another new digital in-car experience for audi means nothing lol

automotive needs test rides in Mobileye car

very doubtful mobileye has over 50 nio's for tests in detroit

some obscure reporter wrote about the over 50 figure with no reference to a company statement of over 50

clickbait

ECarx started by Geely founder has signed up AMD as a strategic partner. Mobileye has been working with ECarx for the Zeekr REM implimentation.

Lenovo Subsidiary Unveils Autonomous Driving Domain Controller.

Chinese electronics giant Lenovo’s subsidiary research & development and manufacturing base company, LCFC Electronics Technology has launched its proprietary automotive domain controller, the EA-R600.

The EA-R600 is embedded with dual NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin core modules, and the whole device can provide up to 550TOPS.

Lenovo previously disclosed that the company has already established a laboratory for automotive computing, working on smart cockpits, autonomous driving, and central computing platform.

Securing talent is priority one.

The Times of Israel’s Tech Israel section writing about a report in Haaretz’s business daily The Marker on Monday,

According to Li Zhen-yu, SVP and GM of Baidu's intelligent driving group, each vehicle of Apollo Go provides more than 15 rides a day on average in top cities like Beijing, a volume quite close to what a taxi can do.

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