Jidu. High tech creation
Jidu was created in April 2021 by the Chinese IT giant Baidu (55%) and China’s largest automotive holding Geely (45%) to develop and produce smart electric vehicles. The new company applies Baidu’s best practices in the field of artificial intelligence and network services, as well as the latest SEA modular platform, which cost Geely 2.5 billion dollars. And already in the fall of 2022, Jidu presented its first production electric SUV, the Robo-01, a real ‘robocar’ with artificial intelligence, demonstrating a new generation of cars of the Intelligent Car 3.0 era.
Difficult birth
Chinese tech giant Baidu is a local analogue of Google Corporation: it also started with a search engine, but gradually acquired numerous divisions and is now one of the top 50 largest companies in China. Back in 2013, Baidu curated an unmanned vehicle project, later called Apollo. Small-scale production of shuttles continues to this day, but they are only suitable for operation in closed areas. At the same time, the company keeps on trying to create its own full-fledged unmanned vehicle.
At first, BMW became Baidu’s main automotive partner, then a cooperation agreement was concluded with BYD, but in the end the project was implemented with a third partner, Geely, which provided its SEA electric vehicle platform. The SEA (Sustainable Experience Architecture) is primarily designed for the premium sub-brand Zeekr: it is used by the Zeekr 001 and Smart #1. But, since this is the world’s first (according to Geely) so-called open source platform, other manufacturers can also use it. This is what Baidu took advantage of. In the spring of 2021, Jidu Auto was created. And already in the fall of 2022, the first production model called Robo-01 appeared.
Jidu Robo-01
Jidu’s electric SUV features a wide variety of advanced technologies, including an autopilot with dual lidars, an external voice interaction system, and artificial intelligence headlights that can broadcast the driver’s emotions to the outside world. The Robocar media system runs on the fourth-generation Snapdragon platform and is equipped with 3D navigation and a voice assistant that does not need access to an external database. The electric vehicle uses the so-called actively deformable structures, that is, elements of varying degrees of mobility. These include retractable AI-controlled hood lidars, a ROBOWing lift-up rear spoiler, a folding U-shaped steering wheel, lift-up satellite speakers, and adaptive seat headrests.
The developers announced a level 4 autopilot powered by two Nvidia Orin X chips. Its operation is ensured by 31 sensors, 2 lidars, 5 radars, 12 ultrasonic radars and 12 cameras. Electronics automatically adapts to one of three driving scenarios (motorway, city and parking), recognizes traffic lights, avoids obstacles, as well as drives in and out of the highway. Such an autopilot is capable of completely independently driving a difficult route, but it has not yet been legalized in any country in the world (and will not be legalized in the foreseeable future)…
