Newshot No Driver's License Needed for a "Road Trip": Apollo Go and CAR Inc. Launch the World's First Driverless Car Rental Service
IT Home onsite news, November 12: Baidu World 2026 was held today (November 12) in Beijing. At the event, Baidu announced that its Apollo Go has joined forces with CAR Inc. to create the world's only driverless-car "road trip" service model.
The service deeply integrates traditional self-drive travel with autonomous driving technology, creating a new cultural and tourism mobility format. Currently, the driverless "road trip" has been launched in Hainan, where it has operated smoothly in service of users for a full year.
IT Home learned at the event that Baidu founder 李彦宏 said: "Many people tell me, I want to buy an Apollo Go too. Today, I'm telling everyone: you can rent one right now!"
According to the introduction, unlike traditional "road trips," this new service breaks the threshold that self-drive travel requires a driver's license. The driverless "road trip" offers five distinctive experiences:
- On call at any time, no need to travel to pick up or return the car;
- Cabin entertainment, with karaoke and cold drinks on demand.
Apollo Go has now launched in 28 cities worldwide, with total autonomous driving mileage exceeding 350 million kilometers, of which fully driverless mileage exceeds 240 million kilometers, and cumulative service orders exceeding 23 million. Apollo Go has currently achieved fully driverless commercial operation in Dubai, is conducting public road testing in London and Switzerland, and has completed the world's first fully driverless test in a right-hand-drive, left-hand-traffic environment in Hong Kong.
On the eve of the event, Baidu Apollo disclosed for the first time Apollo World, an agent-driven omni-modal world model for physical AI. The model models traffic participants within virtual scenarios as AI agents with decision-making and interaction capabilities, supports driverless cars traveling between any origin and destination in a virtual city, and generates virtual-scenario orders that can verify "infinite futures" in advance; the technology stack can also be extended to physical AI scenarios such as robots.
Apollo World is currently used for Apollo Go's global testing and validation, helping to scale the deployment of autonomous driving.
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