Baidu’s first robocar looks like the future we pictured 20 years ago

Chinese tech giant Baidu has unveiled a concept robocar called the ROBO-01. With it, the company's EV car subsidiary JIDU, and Chinese automaker Geely hope to lead the charge into a world of fully-autonomous cars.

The ROBO-01, which Baidu announced on Wednesday, is a sleek all-electric hatchback with gull-wing front doors, a fold-away yoke steering wheel, and a huge focus on computing power. The car will employ Baidu’s Apollo platform, which is used by many car makers in China. According to the company, it has accumulated nearly 17 million miles (27 million kilometers) of supervised autonomous driving through robotaxis using the platform. 

The car will be equipped with Orin X chips from Nvidia as well as 31 external sensors including LiDAR, millimeter-level wave radar, ultrasonic radar, and 12 cameras. The system as a whole, according to Baidu, has been tested thoroughly and verified through JIDU’s simulated vehicle tech called JIDU SIMUCar.

Baidu also equipped the car with Qualcomm’s fourth-generation Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform 8295 chip that enables the car’s large dash-mounted screen to display 3D visuals for navigation, games, and “online office” scenarios. A “human-like” voice assistant also inhabits the car, providing offline feedback within milliseconds, according to the carmaker.