Baidu joins forces with Geely to build cars, is it still challenging Tesla? Is it a gimmick or does it have real power?

With the gradual rise of the new energy vehicle market, more and more new brands have entered the market, many of which include Internet companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi. As a car company jointly funded by Baidu and Geely, Jidu Automobile’s expectations are quite high. Not long ago, Jidu Automobile also brought us the Lunar Exploration Limited Edition of its first model ROBO-01. This model is a joint model launched in cooperation with China Lunar Exploration, priced at 399,800 yuan. Deliveries will begin in 2023 at the earliest.

In terms of appearance design, Jidu ROBO-01 continues the styling design of the previous concept car to the greatest extent. The front face is very simple, with a closed air intake grille in the middle, and the headlights on both sides are irregular in shape. It also uses AI Pixel headlights can realize real-time light language display and interact with pedestrians. At the same time, the lifting lidar installed on the concept car is placed in the front bumper light group. The advantage is that it is beautiful and highly integrated. The disadvantage is that in the event of a rear-end collision, the maintenance cost of the lidar is not cheap.

Although the new car states that it is positioned as a medium-to-large SUV, from the side view of the body, the body posture of ROBO-01 is closer to the hunting style of Ji Krypton 001. The production version has several adjustments compared to the concept version. First of all, in order to meet the needs of regulations, the original electronic rearview mirror was changed to a traditional physical rearview mirror. The door opening method is not a front butterfly door or a rear double door, but returns to the most normal layout, but there is still no fixed door handle. In terms of size, the length, width and height of ROBO-01 reach 4853*1990*1611mm, and the wheelbase is 3000mm.

The design of the rear of the car is also very simple. A hollow spoiler extends from the roof. The through-type taillights are flat and slender. Both ends also present a "Y"-shaped structure. The lower surround is a large black decoration. plate.

Compared with its appearance, ROBO-01's cabin brings a sense of freshness to people. The center console uses a 35.6-inch touch screen with a very high screen-to-body ratio and a resolution of 6K ultra-high definition. At the same time, in order to ensure smooth and stable operation of the car system, it is equipped with Qualcomm 8295 computing platform, which is also the first car-grade chip with 5nm process, far ahead of the current mainstream 8155.

The U-shaped steering wheel is also a very rare design among domestic mass-produced cars. It has a sci-fi feel, but it still takes some time to get used to it. In addition, various physical buttons and levers in the car have been cancelled. Jidu hopes that users will use voice interaction as much as possible to replace physical button interaction. For this purpose, Jidu brings fully offline millisecond-level intelligent voice, which can provide extremely fast response speed and high-frequency coverage in all scenarios. It has to be said that this voice-based interaction method is very bold. Not to mention conventional manufacturers, even new car companies will not consider it.

In terms of autonomous driving, ROBO-01 adopts two solutions: vision and lidar. The two can complement each other, take what each needs and make up for the shortcomings, thereby bringing users a safer and more comfortable travel experience. In terms of hardware, ROBO-01 uses two lidars, 5 millimeter wave radars, 12 ultrasonic radars, 7 8-megapixel cameras, 4 3-megapixel cameras, 1 2-megapixel camera, and a driver infrared sensing camera. , 2 high-precision positioning units, and use two NVIDIA Orin X smart driving chips as computing power support. In the future, the intelligent driving system of ROBO-01 will support continuous high-end intelligent driving from parking space to parking space.

In terms of power, ROBO-01 uses a combination of front and rear dual motors with a maximum power of 400kW and an acceleration time of 100 kilometers in 3.9 seconds. In terms of battery life, it will be equipped with a 100-degree battery with a battery life of up to 600 kilometers.

At Jidu’s first automotive robot ecosystem partner conference on August 8 this year, Baidu founder Robin Li publicly stated that “Jidu is one generation ahead of Tesla in terms of autonomous driving technology.”

As a newcomer, I don’t know whether Jidu can beat Tesla, but judging from its first model ROBO-01, it does have many ideas that are different from mainstream electric vehicles, and this differentiated feature will be used in the future. It is likely to become a selling point in the ROBO-01 competition.