Chapter 319 Fermentation
"Everyone, today is my fifth day in Shenhai. Shenhai is really a magical place. There are not only Terminators here, but also Carrot Run. In Chinese, the pronunciation of "carrot" is very similar to "robot", but Carrot Run is not a robot driverless car, but a driverless car with nothing in the driver's seat.

There are Wujie, AliExpress, etc. There are nearly ten driverless service providers of all sizes in Shenhai.

You heard it right. Although I have not personally experienced the Terminator driverless car from Guangjia Aerospace, today I will intensively experience the driverless services provided by five driverless service providers: Luobo Kuaipao, Wujie, Ali Express, Didi and Xiaoma. "

Mike didn't know about Xianyu. He claimed to be an expert on China and had been to China twice, without even finding a tour guide.

Obviously, with scalpers rushing to buy the cars, it is very difficult for ordinary people to get the robot's white Jetta, and it is even more impossible for foreigners.

The transit time given to foreigners by the University of Tokyo is only 144 hours, which is six days if converted into days.

Therefore, Mike thought that he should find some new materials on the fifth day. If he couldn’t beat the robot’s unmanned driving, couldn’t he experience the most common unmanned driving in Tokyo University?

After all, it’s not easy to come to the University of Tokyo, so I have to shoot more videos, and these cost money to watch.

At this time and space, more and more YouTubers like to shoot content related to the University of Tokyo. This change is not because foreigners like to watch it. There is no special change in the proportion of people in developed countries who watch content related to the University of Tokyo.

The biggest reason for this shift is that Indians love to watch.

India has a large population, and they have always regarded the University of Tokyo as an object they need to surpass. However, the gap between the University of Tokyo and India has not only not narrowed, but has continued to widen.

This gap can be seen as the gap between the old Chinese and the old Americans in the early 21st century.

India also thinks that it is very similar to the University of Tokyo in many aspects, so Indians like to watch videos related to the University of Tokyo and believe that India will become like the University of Tokyo sooner or later.

That’s right, today’s Indians no longer think that India is stronger than Tokyo, and no longer think that Mumbai is a more developed city than Tokyo. Instead, they think that Tokyo is very powerful now, but India will catch up sooner or later.

India has a population of over 14 billion, and the number of views contributed to the University of Tokyo-related videos starts at .

As long as YouTubers don't promote Tokyo University while disparaging India, they will have a secure share of the traffic.

Under such environmental changes, Mike has to shoot more videos to earn traffic.

"Everyone, the first thing we are going to experience is LuoBoKuaiPao, which is a driverless service provider under Baidu, a search engine company of the East China University of Science and Technology. Baidu is similar to Google, mainly engaged in search engines and artificial intelligence. Yes, we have to download the LuoBoKuaiPao app first. When I was in the hotel today, I specifically asked the waiter to help me prepare everything, including binding my Visa card.

The next step is to call a driverless taxi from here to the Bund.”

Compared with robot driverless cars, Mike is obviously not that excited. After all, driverless cars also exist in America and are nothing new.

Google's Waymo was even earlier than CarAdvice, and in 2017 it had 100 vehicles operating on real roads in San Francisco.

"My Tesla can also drive itself, and its driverless performance is pretty good, so my expectation for Carrot Run is that it can be on the same level as Tesla."

Not long after, a white car with a green license plate stopped fifty meters away from Mike, with a carrot logo printed on the body of the car.

"Yes, it's not far from me. I saw a post on Quora about the driverless taxis at the University of Tokyo, which said that the taxis will park some distance away from your actual boarding point, so you will need to walk a distance by yourself.

From my perspective now, I feel it’s OK. The difference between me and a real driver is very small.”

"Just as I knew, there was no driver in the car except me.

OK, I will take a taxi next. We will record the whole process and edit some key points for explanation. "I am very happy to experience the driverless technology of Dongda University. Let's see how it compares with Tesla. Just before getting in the car, I found that its roof has many components.

I think it should be a radar-related signal receiving device."

"Although I have experienced driverless cars many times in the past, this is my first time riding in a driverless taxi."

"Before getting on the bus, we need to enter the last four digits of our phone number. This is to verify our identity and prevent non-passengers from getting on the bus. Fortunately, I have a Dongda phone card."

"One password, the car door opened, and we're getting in the car now!" Mike was a little excited after getting in the car.

"Get in the car, we can go.

There was no driver, and the only voice in the whole car was my voice speaking into the microphone. It felt good, very nice, as if I needed to click this confirmation button to start our journey.

"Okay, we're off now, it's great, it's not abrupt at all, it's very linear."

"The speed is not very fast. I checked and it can only maintain about 60 kilometers per hour. This speed is not fast. Compared with the speed of humans or the Terminator I saw, it is obviously incomparable.

But considering that he had no driver and there was no one operating the vehicle, this speed was acceptable.

If all the vehicles in Shenhai are made up of such unmanned vehicles, I would think it is very sci-fi. The future mode of transportation will be nothing more than such highly unmanned vehicles.

But if it's all like the Terminator, with robots driving our cars, that future would be a bit too sci-fi.

How wealthy would our society have to be for every car to have a robot driver?

It’s hard for me to imagine that maybe Todai’s productivity could do that, but is it necessary?
There is a small camera here that can be used to monitor passengers. Just now, I didn’t wear my seat belt, and there will be a voice reminder here. "

“I’m used to driverless cars so I wasn’t too nervous, but it was still a little too quiet.

If I'm driving by myself, I like to play some music, but now I'm recording a video, so there's no way to play music. YouTube's copyright management measures are very strict.

Compared with traditional cars, its noise reduction effect is really good. No wonder I saw Chinese people talking about driverless cars on Quora and said that they easily fell asleep in driverless taxis when they were still in Tokyo University.

Such a quiet environment really makes it easy for people to fall asleep, especially when getting up in the morning to go to work.”

During the whole process, Mike experienced the driverless technology of three manufacturers respectively. After the experience, he stood on the Bund with his back to the Huangpu River and the buildings of Lujiazui.

“After the above driverless experience, I was really surprised.

What surprised me was that these three driverless cars were very good. The Turnip Run was very quiet, the ride was very good, there was almost no bumps on the road, and the seats were spacious and comfortable. It was more radical than the American driverless taxis I knew about, and both the location accuracy of picking up passengers and the speed on the road were better than American's.

I think this is probably due to the intensive launch of optical satellites by the manufacturers behind it in the past. These optical satellites have helped them improve the accuracy of their geographic location.

If I had to rate it, I would give it an 8.

The second one is Wujie, a driverless taxi company jointly established by Huawei and a car manufacturer from Dongda University that focuses on low-price strategy. What shocked me most was the price. The price of a 5-kilometer taxi is 3 US dollars when converted into US dollars, which is less than 1 US dollar per kilometer.

The price of Unbounded is $0.5. Yes, the price for five kilometers is only $0.5.

It provides a total of four seats. The traditional driving seat has been changed into a passenger seat. Passengers need to fasten their seat belts after getting on the car. It will continuously pick up and drop off passengers.

So it's not like you have a car, but the price is really amazingly low, even cheaper than the NYC subway.

Although CNN and Fox have been promoting the problem of overcapacity at the University of Tokyo, I have never really believed in these media reports because they are highly purposeful.

But after I came to Todai in person and saw the prices, I began to believe this argument.

Because the overcapacity must be to such an extent that they can offer such a low price.

I also understand why Tesla, Honda, Toyota, or Volkswagen will gradually lose the Tokyo market.

In the face of the Internet, they really have no room to survive. You only need to spend 0.5 US dollars to ride 5 kilometers. With such a low price for a taxi, would you still want to buy a car?
After I played Unbounded, the waiting time was only five minutes, which is completely acceptable.

The cost is really very shocking.

Its riding experience is obviously not very good. It only provides you with a seat. Compared with the Carrot, which can enjoy the entire back space alone, the boundless space is small and the noise during driving is obviously much louder.

Because it has to constantly drop passengers off and pick them up, its speed will be slower than that of Carrot. The constant acceleration and deceleration will result in a bad riding experience.

But at this price, these are not disadvantages, and I would give Unbounded a score of 9.

Finally, there is AliExpress, an unmanned driving service under Alibaba. Its experience is very similar to that of Luobo Express, and its price is also similar, but its accuracy in picking up and dropping off passengers is not as good as that of Luobo Express.

The driving strategy is obviously more conservative, the speed should be less than 60 kilometers, and another very important point is that the waiting time for a taxi will be longer, probably because the number of vehicles deployed is not as good as the previous two.

I can only give it a six.

To sum up, the scores of these three companies are AliExpress 6 points, Luobo 8 points, and Wujie 9 points.

There are two left, Didi and Xiaoma. I will continue shooting the test video tomorrow. After shooting, I will return to San Francisco. Finally, I hope I can defeat the Terminator tomorrow.

Wish me luck. "

On the evening of the filming, Mike edited the video and posted it on Youtube.

The cyberpunk-style photos taken by Mike a few days ago attracted a lot of fans for him, and his Youtube channel also gained a lot of viewers.

Especially when talking about Dongda University's driverless car, all the data in the entire video are growing rapidly.

"China is already more advanced than America."

"While we are still arguing about whether Waymo should be on the road, there are already so many self-driving taxi service providers in China."

“As an American born in the 70s, I feel very sad. From the s to the first decade of this century, the world’s innovation was led by America, and the birth of innovative companies never stopped.

Twenty years later, the technological development of the entire America seems to have stagnated. Innovation has shifted from innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises to innovation among giants. I haven't heard of innovation that is not led by the Big 20 for a long time. Innovation among giants is almost a monopoly.

Google has done driverless cars, so other companies will not do it. When I see that there are so many driverless taxi companies competing with each other in Dongda, I feel envious. This proves that Dongda’s innovation environment is still full of vitality. "

"Shenhai is more cyberpunk than I thought. Wujie made me realize that this model can make our planet more environmentally friendly instead of everyone having to drive."

“If Musk really wants to make Tesla a money-making tool in his spare time, and turn it into his own taxi running on the road, he’d better go to Dongda.

That’s just not realistic in America.”

Tesla's stock price experienced sharp rises and falls. During the plunge, Musk held a conference call and said that Tesla is not a car company, but an artificial intelligence company, and their core competitiveness is driverless technology.

Tesla in the future should automatically help car owners make money.

When the owner is not using Tesla, he can use Tesla's driverless technology to pick up passengers and turn it into a driverless taxi.

Tesla will distribute this profit as dividends.

Therefore, the number of Tesla vehicles in the world is the market size of Tesla's driverless taxis in the future.

If we use this logic to value, Tesla's valuation is not overestimated, but underestimated, because at that time, Tesla was the only company in the world that could do this business.

Two years have passed, Tesla has not done it, but Huawei is about to do it.

It’s not because the technology can’t do it, but because of the environment, the overall environment is not good.

In blue states like California, the government does not stop them, and Uber drivers can smash and destroy Waymo vehicles at will without being punished. The government has no way to punish these Uber drivers.

In red states like Texas, drivers dare not do this because they will be punished for doing so, but driverless taxis cannot obtain administrative licenses because they need to protect jobs.

It's like both ends are blocked, and neither the red states nor the blue states can do it.

(End of this chapter)