72 hours in Wuhan: I was at the "front line" of the battle between humans and AI

Since the recent explosion of the popularity of Carrot Run, various places have been cooling down the trend of driverless cars. The development of driverless cars is not only about technological breakthroughs, but also about the livelihoods of practitioners and social adaptation. This article will take you to the "front line" of this battle and explore the far-reaching impact of driverless car technology.

At noon on July 20, near Jinhu Garden in Caidian District, Wuhan City, an old lady in her 70s from Wuhan picked up her mobile phone and took a photo of the Crow sitting on the "Carrot Run".

"Do you really dare to sit? I don't dare to sit." The old lady was very excited.

This is a moment that Crow witnessed 72 hours at the "front line" in Wuhan, where the first large-scale battle between humans and AI is about to begin.

Outside the front line, influencers on TikTok are shouting: driverless cars are taking away the jobs of the lower class; the middle class in coffee shops in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are worried that their professional lives may soon be replaced by AI.

But, the front line here is quiet.

Apart from a taxi company called Wuhan Construction Bus Passenger Transport Co., Ltd. that issued a "shout" that "cruising taxis are on the brink of death" and a few drivers who occasionally laughed at the clumsiness of "taro radish", it is difficult to feel the presence of driverless cars in this city.

As online ride-hailing services see their final dawn, what exactly happened on the “front line”?

01 “Cooling down”

Caidian District, where Baidu's Radish Kuaipao Automobile Industrial Base is located, is considered to be one of the areas with the largest number of Radish driverless cars.

At 11 o'clock on July 20, Crow, who had waited for 45 minutes in Wuhan Optics Valley and still failed to beat Carrot Run, came to the Carrot Run base with great expectations.

From 11:37 to 12:20, no vehicle responded for more than 40 minutes. After experiencing three delays and two order cancellations by Carrot Run, Mr. Crow finally gave up.

During the 72 hours in Wuhan, Crow hailed six taxis at four places, namely, Range Rover Park, Jinhu Garden, Jinxiu Longcheng, and Baidu Carrot Run Production Base. He only got a taxi twice, and four times the order was canceled by the system because no vehicle responded.

Many drivers reported that the number of driverless cars on the streets of Wuhan has decreased significantly in recent days. "Sometimes I don't see a single one in a whole day," said one driver.

Not only are there fewer and fewer cars, but the places that Carrot Run can go are also subject to many restrictions.

The "LuoBoKuaiPao" APP shows that its operating scope in Wuhan is relatively wide, covering Wuchang District, Hanyang District, Qiaokou District, Dongxihu District, Caidian District, Hongshan District, Jiangxia District and other areas.

The operating area may seem large, but not all places within the area can be visited.

For example, at 10 am on July 20, when Mr. Crow set the destination to AEON Mall and Tongda Plaza in Jiangxia District, Carrot Run displayed: The current route is inaccessible.

According to an unconfirmed statement from an online ride-hailing driver, driverless cars are not allowed to enter the city center during the day in the near future because they can easily cause congestion and summer vacation is the peak tourist season.

Various signs indicate that, perhaps influenced by the surging public opinion on the Internet, Wuhan is cooling down on driverless cars.

02 An outlet for emotional turmoil

We left Wuhan Station late, so the driver circled Wuhan Station twice before picking us up. The driver's surname was Li, so we'll call him Mr. Li.

Mr. Li is about 30 years old, with a bright face. On the back of the front seat hangs a brand new billboard to attract car charter business. "If you want to charter a car, feel free to call me. The phone number is on the sign, you can write it down," said Mr. Li.

More than a decade ago, after graduating from high school, Mr. Li worked in real estate sales for a local developer in Wuhan. "In 2015 and 2016, real estate sales were very hot. We had a 2% sales commission and easily made 30,000 or 40,000 yuan a month. Then, in 2020, you know what happened; then, the company was gone."

After hearing from a friend that online taxi-hailing is very profitable, Mr. Li officially joined the online taxi-hailing business three months ago. “Who would have thought that after just three months of driving, there would be no one driving a taxi anymore?”

Mr. Li's concerns are not isolated. The outbreak of public opinion about driverless cars in Wuhan originated from an online document titled "Cruising taxis are on the verge of death."

Since April, the company has stopped operating four taxis, and the trend is still spreading. They attributed the sluggish market to the popularity of driverless cars and online ride-hailing. The last sentence in the document, "The original intention of technology is to make human life better, but the reality is that it makes the lower-class people hungry," completely ignited the emotions on the Internet.

But when Wu Yajun actually arrived in Wuhan and talked to dozens of drivers, they told another version of the story:

In Wuhan, the "conflict" between cruising taxis and online ride-hailing taxis has been around for a long time. Before the emergence of online ride-hailing taxis, taxi driving was a popular profession in Wuhan, as most people traveled by taxi. The income was even higher than that of many small business owners.

But all this has changed with the emergence of online ride-hailing. Now in Wuhan, there are only 18,000 taxis, while online ride-hailing has reached nearly 30,000, which is equivalent to more than doubling the market supply. It is no wonder that taxi drivers have a natural hostility towards the technology industry. After all, if this happens again, taxi drivers may not even have food to eat.

As a result, driverless cars have become an outlet for taxi companies to vent their emotions.

03 The dawn in Wuhan is quiet

Apart from some dissatisfied drivers, most Wuhan drivers have a relatively calm reaction to driverless cars. Their general view is that there is an impact, but it is minimal.

First, there are too few driverless cars now. Although there are rumors online that there are 1,000 of them in Wuhan, the Wuhan Municipal Transportation Bureau responded that there are only more than 400 Carousel Kuaipao cars in Wuhan.

At present, the total number of online-hailing taxis and taxis in Wuhan should be close to 50,000. Based on this data, the number of driverless cars is less than one percent of the total number of online-hailing taxis and taxis.

Second, the waiting time for a self-driving car is long and the car is slow. A driver told Wu Ya Jun that few people would choose a self-driving car for their daily commute, and many users would not take it again after trying it out.

Because "taro radish" is too clumsy.

If you want to take the Lobster Express now, not only will you have to wait for more than 40 minutes, but you can only get on and off at designated stops. There are no obvious signs at the designated stops, and they can only be identified through mobile phone maps.

The design of the stations is not entirely based on the demand for taxis. For example, in the Jianghan Commercial Pedestrian Street, the most prosperous area in Wuhan, there are very few "Carrot Run" stations.

In addition, the speed of the Carrot Run is also significantly slower than that of online ride-hailing cars. When following a car, the Carrot Run will maintain a safe distance of 3 to 5 meters, and will significantly slow down when there are vehicles or pedestrians in front or on the side. If it reaches a congested road, the problem of the Carrot Run's lack of sensitivity becomes more obvious.

While riding with Mr. Crow, Carrot Run was often hurriedly driven by vehicles behind him, honking their horns because of his slow speed.

Third, and most importantly, most online ride-hailing drivers in Wuhan make a good living. According to feedback from online ride-hailing drivers, if they drive 10-12 hours a day, they can make about 400-500 yuan. If they work harder, the number can be even higher.

Based on a daily turnover of 450 yuan, minus the 30% commission deduction from the online ride-hailing platform and one day off per week, the monthly income of online ride-hailing drivers exceeds 8,000 yuan. If the car is rented, another 3,000 yuan will be deducted for rental and maintenance fees, and the income of online ride-hailing drivers is around 4,000-5,000 yuan.

This figure is not high, but in Wuhan where most people only earn 4,000-5,000 yuan a month, the income of online ride-hailing drivers is at least at the local medium level.

The calmness of the online ride-hailing drivers was in stark contrast to the surging panic on the Internet. Before the first large-scale battle between humans and AI began, silence enveloped every corner of Wuhan, and online ride-hailing vehicles welcomed their last dawn.

04 The attack of unmanned vehicles

Among the dozens of drivers that Crow has communicated with, most of them did not notice that the development of driverless cars is speeding up at a speed that they can hardly imagine.

On the last day of the first half of this year, Beijing issued the "Beijing Autonomous Driving Vehicle Regulations (Draft for Comments)", which intends to support the use of autonomous driving vehicles in urban public electric bus transport, online car-hailing, car rental and other urban travel services.

Not only Beijing, but also major cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Suzhou are accelerating the introduction of driverless taxis. As of June 2024, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen and other cities have issued driverless car qualifications to many companies, and 51 cities have introduced autonomous driving pilot demonstration policies.

What has been accelerated is not only the speed of policy implementation, but also the cost reduction brought about by technological progress.

In May this year, Baidu announced the sixth-generation driverless car Apollo RT6 at Apollo Day, and the cost has dropped to 200,000 yuan. Previously, Wang Yunpeng, vice president of Baidu and general manager of the autonomous driving technology department, once revealed that the total cost of the fifth-generation Apollo driverless car, including the whole vehicle and the driverless kit, was 480,000 yuan.

In other words, after just one upgrade, the cost of a driverless car has dropped by nearly 60%. This does not include the cost reduction brought about by the elimination of the real car safety officer after upgrading from the fifth generation to the sixth generation.

Of the vehicles currently in service, 200 are equipped with safety officers, and the rest are remotely monitored, with one person monitoring three vehicles. Even if safety officers do not need to take turns to monitor vehicles in 24-hour operation, about 300 people are still needed. For the sixth-generation unmanned vehicles, the on-site safety officers will be eliminated and all will be remotely monitored.

According to the calculation of "LatePost", after five years of depreciation, the daily operating cost of the fifth-generation car of Carrot Express is 471 yuan, while the daily cost of the sixth-generation car can be reduced to 109 yuan, a cost reduction of nearly 80%. The insider of the driverless manufacturer that Crow Jun communicated with also confirmed the credibility of this data.

Although it is difficult for driverless taxis to be more efficient than human drivers at present, please believe that with the fierce competition in the automotive industry, the cost of driverless cars may drop more and faster than expected.

This means that the replacement time may be earlier than Wuhan online taxi drivers expected. "We estimate that within five years, driverless cars will occupy 30% of the market share," predicted the insider of the aforementioned driverless car manufacturer.

At present, this prediction is not a fantasy.

05 The challenge is far from coming

In any technological revolution, people always overestimate the short-term impact and underestimate the long-term impact. This may sound cliché, but it is actually happening in the story of Wuhan's driverless car.

On the current Internet, driverless cars are completely popular.

On TikTok, the most popular video about driverless cars has received more than 78,000 likes and 436,000 comments. The title reads in bold letters: Taxi drivers can lose their jobs.

When everyone is shouting: driverless cars are taking away the jobs of the lower class, I have to say that the real public opinion about driverless cars is still far from coming.

Although this matter has caused a lot of uproar online, its actual impact is very limited. The reason is simple: due to high costs and small numbers of deployments, driverless cars have not had a large-scale impact on online car-hailing and taxi drivers.

But technology will always improve and costs will gradually decrease. Perhaps in ten years, or perhaps in eight years, the critical point will always come. What should we do then?

Regarding the number of online ride-hailing drivers, various agencies have different statistics, some say more than 6 million, some say more than 10 million. The difference lies in the statistical standard, whether only full-time drivers are counted, or both full-time and part-time drivers are counted. Regardless of the algorithm, it is certain that this will at least affect the livelihoods of millions of families.

Only at this point will driverless car companies face real challenges, and all preparations have already begun.

Just two days before Mr. Crow arrived in Wuhan, Baidu announced its new candidate for the No. 1 public relations position, Jiang Xinjie, vice president of public relations from 360 Group.

Many people are familiar with Jiang Xinjie. He became famous in the 2001 college entrance examination with "The Death of Red Hare". In 2010, he exposed the gutter oil scandal as an investigative reporter. Compared with Qu Jing, Jiang Xinjie's biggest advantage is his good reputation.

With this background, Baidu obviously hopes that Jiang Xinjie can gain more public understanding and emotional recognition in the future public opinion on driverless cars.

There is no doubt that Baidu is preparing for the revolutionary moment of driverless cars. When the revolution is coming, everyone is making the right choice for themselves. This is true for people and companies.

But the future is not so easy to predict. AI is a new thing, and no one can predict its future. The changes brought about by technology are always faster and more complicated than we imagine. Most people who are really in the wave can only fly out of the window like a feather and find a new place to stay.

One hundred years ago, in order to protest the popularization of electricity, 600 lamplighters in New York City declared a collective strike. That day, New York City was in darkness.

But 21 years later, the last two lamplighters who specialized in lighting kerosene street lamps in New York announced that they would change their careers. From then on, New York also had a new name:

The city that never sleeps.

Text/Lin Bai