Geely and Baidu have officially launched the JiYue 01 ROBOCAR with AI and voice-controlled parking function. This comes just over two months after announcing a restructuring of their business partnership to bring their AI-driven 01 ROBOCAR to market. The 01 is the world’s first consumer vehicle to offer Baidu’s full Apollo package with Level 4 autonomous driving.
Announced in January 2021 Baidu to expand from software development to physical EV production and partnered with the multinational automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, better known as Geely, together. In March of the same year the brand JIDU officially announced after previously raising $300 million in seed capital, followed by an additional $400 million in Series A funding led by Baidu in January 2022.
The JIDU brand was created to popularize autonomous driving and human-machine interaction technologies, in particular its ROBO-01 concept, which was equipped in early 2022 with a unique internal voice interaction system that enables communication between humans, cars and the environment.
Last August, Geely announced it would take a larger role in JIDU and take a larger financial stake. Previously, Geely owned 45% of the minority shares in JIDU, while Baidu owned 55%. With the creation of the JiYue brand, Geely now owns 65% of the shares and operates the brand under its own umbrella, while Baidu retains 35% of the minority shares.
Launched in China, the JiYue 01 ROBOCAR is based on Geely’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), with two battery variants and fast charging. The vehicle offers various power and range options as well as advanced AI technology from Qualcomm for voice recognition and an impressive autonomous parking function. The vehicle also comes with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin Chips and a variety of sensors to enable advanced autonomous driving functions.
JiYue plans to expand the 01 ROBOCAR’s autonomous capabilities in several Chinese cities and develop a second model in the future. However, pricing details have not been revealed yet.