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).

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.

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.

automotive needs test rides in Mobileye car

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.