King Long Apolong at Spring Festival Gala

At the eve of Chinese traditional Spring Festival, the grand day of family reunion, the world’s first “Land-Sea-Air” unmanned system combination exhibition composed of unmanned vehicles, unmanned ships, and unmanned aerial vehicles was held ceremoniously at Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the world’s longest cross-sea bridge, demonstrating innovatively the powerful technologic feast to the world’s audiences at 2018 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Led by Baidu Apollo unmanned vehicle, more than 100 “National team” vehicles, including the unmanned microcirculation vehicle “King Long Apollo” jointly built by King Long and Baidu.com, became the first fleet driving on Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, magnificently demonstrating the “China’s Speed” of automatic driving at that much-anticipated historic moment.

The CCTV hosts preside on a Apolong on Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge at Zhuhai branch of CCTV Spring Festival Gala

The yearly CCTV Spring Festival Gala is a grand gathering for all Chinese worldwide and is the China’s indicator to demonstrate the national strength and technologic progress to the world. At that night, on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, one of world’s renowned “China’s Mega Projects”, the high-tech “Sea-Land-Air" fleet representing the China’s top technologic strength, made an amazing appearance. Baidu Apollo open platform, the China’s unmanned driving “national team”, led more than 100 vehicles to drive on Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and complete the highly difficult motion of 8-shaped crossing route under unmanned driving mode. With cute and lovely appearance and sense of future technology, 6 “King Long Apollo” vehicles became the center of attention in the fleet. In addition, the unmanned aerial vehicle fleet formed a 3D white dolphin formation to fly over Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, presenting the China’s first large 3D unmanned aerial vehicle fleet show, and the unmanned ship fleet drove through the bridge in formation of sea wave. At that moment, the China’s technology strength and development speed once again gained the world’s attention.

High-tech “Sea-Land-Air" fleet makes appearance on Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge

This large-scale unmanned vehicle show at this Spring Festival proved that the unmanned driving is accelerating to become reality. It’s reported that the Baidu Apollo and the China’s first unmanned microcirculation bus “Apolong” jointly built by Baidu.com and King Long, which were presented at this Spring Festival Gala, represent the top level cooperation of China’s bus industry in the fields of automatic driving and new energy vehicle.

In June, 2017, Baidu.com and King Long officially partnered to plunge into the unmanned driving field and the teams of both parties efficiently and solidly carried forward the R&D and application of unmanned driving technology in the commercial vehicle field. On September 20, 2017, the microcirculation pure-electric bus powered by Apollo 1.0 completed the automatic circulation driving and smooth control experiences without sensors. The completion of the Apollo 1.0 based technology made a solid step towards the future-oriented intelligent, networked, and shared public transport.

Meanwhile, on the basis of the first generation automatic driving vehicle, the China’s first mass production microcirculation unmanned bus “King Long Apollo” was developed jointly through the official cooperation of two parties. Besides the automatic driving solution and networking technology, the “Apollo Gene” and the “King Long Intelligent Car Networking” were inputted throughout the R&D processes, including the overall appearance and upholstery design of vehicle, the overall design of human-vehicle interactive system, the design of specific scene need architecture, and specific automatic driving system of microcirculation vehicle. On November 16, “King Long Apollo” was officially debuted at Baidu World Development Conference, becoming the China’s first commercial-level unmanned microcirculation vehicle. Robin Li, the founder and CEO of Baidu.com, expressed at the keynote speech that the 2^nd generation unmanned microcirculation bus “King Long Apollo” jointly developed by Baidu.com and King Long would realize commercial mass production and online operation in 2018, demonstrating the significant progresses of commercialization projects in the strategic cooperation between two parties.

“King Long Apollo” officially debuts at Baidu World Development Conference

On December 20, as a member of Baidu Apollo automatic driving “National Team”, “Apolong” drove steadily under unmanned driving mode on a 4km long road in Xiong’an New District, sufficiently demonstrating the powerful strength of unmanned commercial vehicles and the extensive prospect of unmanned driving in the commercialization field.

All intelligent vehicles from Apollo council members, including “Apolong”, make appearance

The automatic driving level of Apolong developed for commercialization reaches L4 (Note: Highly automatic driving means that all driving operations are completed by the unmanned driving system). The initial application scene aims at the “Last 1km” commuting and it’s planned to realize firstly the commercialization for specific scenes, including automatic shuttling in scenic spots, parks, and airports, and fulfill specific service tasks through human-machine interaction.

It can be said that Apolong is an intelligent bus integrated with sophisticated technologic achievements. It’s based on the King Long’s vehicle R&D strength and manufacturing platform and is powered by leading new energy technology, all-new motorized, electronic and intelligent pattern, and King Long Bus Networking Platform and Eco-Chip new energy management system to realize automatic driving, safety sensing, and intelligent drive control.