Hello, a Chinese bike-sharing and ride-hailing firm backed by fintech giant Ant Group, unveiled its first driverless taxi on Thursday, intensifying competition with local rivals Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai.
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The vehicle, Hello Robot1, is based on the Venucia VX6 SUV produced by a joint venture between China’s Dongfeng Motor and Japan’s Nissan, according to Yu Qiankun, co-founder of Hello’s self-driving unit, who presented the car at an event in Shanghai.
Equipped with 14 high-resolution cameras, eight lidars and 18 other sensors, Hello Robot1 features 360-degree detection of its surroundings. It also includes a set of “elastic wave sensors” for monitoring minor scrapes and bumps in the vehicle’s body, enhancing its responsiveness to unforeseen incidents, according to Yu.
Hello has partnered with Alibaba Cloud to create a computing cluster powered by more than 10,000 graphics processing units. The ride-hailing company also teamed up with Alibaba Group Holding to develop the Daoyu model series, based on Alibaba’s Qwen artificial intelligence models.
Ant is an affiliate of Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post. Alibaba Cloud is the AI and cloud services unit of Alibaba.
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This marks a major milestone for Hello, after announcing a foray into driverless taxis in June. The company’s robotaxi unit secured initial funding in excess of 3 billion yuan (US$421 million) from Hello, Ant, and Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries.
As a latecomer to the sector, Hello faces fierce competition from WeRide, Pony.ai and Baidu’s Apollo unit, all of which have expanded their services beyond China to markets such as the US and the United Arab Emirates.