In October, a Startup Jidu Automotive, backed by Chinese AI giant Baidu and Chinese automaker Geely, has officially launched the Robo-01 Lunar Edition autonomous electric vehicle. In 2023, the car will go on sale.

The Robo-01 Lunar Edition, worth approximately US$55,000, is a limited edition co-created with China’s lunar exploration project. It has two lidars, a 5mm radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors and 12 high resolution cameras. It is the first vehicle to offer built-in AI-assisted voice recognition with a voice response speed of within 700 milliseconds thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8295 chip.

“It’s a car, and even more than that, a robot,” Jidu CEO Jo Xia said during a live broadcast of the car’s presentation (translated from CNBC’s Chinese). He added that it “could become the standard for self-driving cars.”

But how autonomous the car will be remains to be seen: Baidu and Jidu said in January 2022 that the car will have Level 4 autonomous driving capability, which does not require a human driver to drive the vehicle. But the press release at the car’s launch made no mention of Level 4, only saying that the car offers “high-level autonomous driving.”

The blurry language could have been dictated by lawyers. China has yet to pass laws or regulations governing autonomous vehicles for the consumer market. The driver must currently maintain control of the vehicle. In September 2022, Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li noted that the lower level of autonomy protects car companies from liability in the event of an accident, as the driver is expected to be in control. At level 4, the vehicle manufacturer or robot taxi operator using the vehicle will be at fault.

However, the launch of Robo-01 signals a dramatic shift in the auto industry, which has been slow to adopt electric vehicles and even slower to move towards autonomy. No other consumer vehicle on the market yet offers Level 4 autonomy. Tesla’s full autonomous driving, despite its fancy name and CEO claims, is only Level 2 or “partially automated driving” as defined by SAE International (formerly the Society of Automotive Engineers) . Other autonomous vehicle manufacturers, including Tesla, are collecting data from mass-produced L2 vehicles to train L4 algorithms.

“It’s a car, and even more so a robot,” said Jidu CEO Jo Xia.

Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz is offering its Drive Pilot Level 3 autonomous driving system for S-Class and EQS sedans in Germany. Level 3 addresses all aspects of driving but requires the driver to remain ready to regain control if required. Drivers do not need to keep their eyes on the road, but Drive Pilot will turn off if the driver’s face is covered.

This raises the question of what Robo-01 can do that the Mercedes Drive Pilot can’t. And what features will Robo-01 use to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel as required by current Chinese law? Answers to these questions may have to wait until the release of Robo-01.

Regardless of the vehicle’s official autonomy designation, Baidu has announced that its Apollo self-driving package has level 4 capabilities. This includes what the company calls a point-to-point autopilot designed to operate on highways, city streets and parking lots. Jidu is conducting additional trials in Beijing and Shanghai to ensure its point-to-point autopilot will cover all of China’s major cities.

The lack of a steering wheel is a statement in itself.

Chinese regulations allow Level 4 robot taxis that operate within designated geofences, and Apollo has already shown what it can do with the Baidu Apollo Go robot taxis, which have made over 1 million trips in at least 10 cities across China. Baidu recently unveiled its latest autonomous robot taxi, the Level-4 Apollo RT6, which has a detachable steering wheel. The lack of a steering wheel is a statement in itself, and it frees up cabin space for extra seats or even desktop computers, game consoles and vending machines.

China could well become the world’s largest market for autonomous vehicles, with fully autonomous vehicles accounting for more than 40 percent of the country’s new car sales in 2040 and 12 percent of the installed vehicle base, according to global consulting firm McKinsey.

In 2018, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Transportation, published standards for building intelligent car road test facilities. Shortly thereafter, provinces and cities across China began setting up their own test centers.

Of the many Chinese companies that are already gearing up to enter the autonomous vehicle market, Baidu is the biggest player. The Apollo open source software development platform was launched in 2017. Two years later, the company received the country’s first Level 4 road test licenses. Most recently, it received fully unmanned permits in Wuhan and Chongqing, making Baidu the only company of its kind in China to provide taxi services without drivers in the car, like this makes Waymo in Phoenix and Cruise in San Francisco. Meanwhile, its Abolong L4 autonomous bus is operated commercially at closed campuses in at least 24 Chinese cities.

Robo-01 is powered by a 100 kilowatt-hour lithium battery from Chinese battery manufacturer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL. It can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour) in about 4 seconds and can travel 600 km on a single charge.

So a car can go far and it can go fast. But can he control himself? We’ll find out in 2023.