SAIC Motor Claims Its Robot Taxis Will Achieve Level 4 Self Driving In China

Chinese automotive giant SAIC Motor corporation which owns brands like MG Motors has revealed that its robot taxis will achieve level 4 self-driving capability in China. It also produces vehicles in China through joint ventures with companies like General Motors and the Volkswagen Group. It has been expanding its portfolio to digital transportation paradigms like robot taxis. In China, this space is flooded by tech companies like Baidu which has its Apollo Robot taxi and Alibaba backed AutoX. 

Even in the US, a similar trend has been established with Waymo being backed by Google and even though Cruise is a subsidiary of GM, it is a separate company. Both these are amongst the best exponents of self-driving cars and are also developing their own robot taxi service. Similarly, Tesla is also drifting towards the autonomous driving space. 

In China, Baidu and AutoX are the major self-driving car players 

But what's interesting is that SAIC believes that it can get level 4 robot taxis on the road before the year's end in China. Sure, in China, the regulation isn't as stringent as the US, but again this is a steep challenge. 

As per reports, SAIC plans on introducing 40-60 robot taxis with level 4 self-driving capabilities on the streets of Shanghai and Suzhou by the end of 2021. Mass production of its robot taxis, however, is some time away as it plans that for 2025. It even plans on changing the meaning of the SAIC acronym to Shanghai AI Corporation considering self-driving cars are amongst the most challenging computer vision and machine learning problems known to man. 

SAIC has plans to deepen its research on computer vision in tandem with LiDAR for intelligent driving in order to realise the implementation of independent wire control chassis products. It wants to deploy data-driven iterations of its robot taxis which will need continuous updates for its autonomous driving tech.