The following is a timetable in Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

Baidu has uncovered plans for an electric self-driving car with a removable steering wheel (方向盘), marking another step forward in the fast-moving robotaxi race in China.

The Chinese tech giant, the country’s answer to Google, showed the Apollo RT6, its sixth-generation self-driving car, at its yearly flagship meeting on Thursday. Baidu’s ride-hailing (叫车) service, Apollo Go, currently operates in 10 Chinese cities. The new vehicle will be introduced through that program sometime next year. Once regulators give the green light, the Apollo RT6’s removable steering wheel will legally be able to come off, a company executive said Thursday.

Baidu is selling its new design as a way to free up space for things like “extra seating, vending machines, desktops, or gaming consoles”. The company said its new self-driving car has dramatically lowered the production costs from previous versions, by about half. Those cost savings will be passed on to passengers as the company prepares to introduce the cars to its existing robotaxis around the country, according to CEO Robin Li.

“We are moving towards a future where taking a robotaxi will be half the cost of taking a taxi today,” he said in a statement. “This massive cost reduction will make tens of thousands of self-driving cars available across China.”

Baidu made its name as a massive search engine provider, but it has also long spent money on self-driving technology in the world’s largest car market. In April, the company announced — along with another Chinese self-driving startup — that it would start letting people in certain areas book taxi rides without anyone behind the wheel. Other companies have showed off vehicles without steering wheels before, including GM and Honda, Google, and Mercedes-Benz.

In April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told analysts that the automaker was aiming to start mass production of its own robotaxi without steering wheels or pedals in 2024. Baidu said Thursday that its new model was ready for production, but did not disclose a manufacturing partner.

Cars could be able to "talk" to each other to warn about dangers on the roads using 5G technology in future, according to researchers.

Researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) believe 5G may enable driverless cars to send each other messages about dangers such as ice or deep holes.

And they believe the high-speed, low -delay (低延迟的) nature of 5G will improve driverless cars to the point where they will be safer than the cars being driven today. They predict the number of road traffic accidents which cause more than 1. 3 million deaths and up to 50 million people injured worldwide every year will drop greatly as a result.

Dr Dimitrios, a member of the research group, said, “To have a better idea of what the future will look like, think of having cars that not only use sensors (感应器) to find what's around them, but also can talk to each other about safety information nearby.”

“I'm sure anyone who has had a bad experience on frozen roads would have benefited from knowing about the dangerous conditions ahead of time so they could have changed their speed or, if possible, even avoided that route (路线) altogether.”

With the help of 5G, an early warning system in vehicles will come into use within the next few years. Cars that are close enough to the danger area will pass warning messages to other cars around them using communication technologies, but also to cars further away using 5G, fast and reliably. Then those cars will send the same information to cars near them and 80 on, forming a joined-up.

5G is an exciting mobile technology, which will give a great boost to smart cities and autonomous (全自动的) vehicles among many other things.