Chinese internet services giant Baidu says that it has begun volume production of Apolong, China’s first L4 fully autonomous 14-seater bus.

It says Apolong, developed in partnership with Chinese bus manufacturer King Long and powered by Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving open platform, will be put into commercial operation in several Chinese cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Xiongan, Wuhan and Pingtan of Fujian province, and has set its sights on overseas markets.

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The production volume of the 14-seat Apolong has reached 100 units at its manufacturing facility in Xiamen, in southeastern China’s Fujian province.

“2018 marks the first year of commercialization for autonomous driving. From the volume production of Apolong, we can truly see that autonomous driving is making great strides – taking the industry from zero to one,” said Baidus Chairman and CEO Robin Li.

Baidu announced that it has teamed up with King Long and SB Drive, the autonomous driving subsidiary of Japan’s SoftBank Group, to bring Apolong autonomous mini buses to Japan for operation in cities such as Tokyo in early 2019.

Baidu says that Apolong will initially be put to use in last-mile travel scenarios in tourist spots, airports and other enclosed areas.

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Baidu also announced Apollo 3.0, the newest upgrade to the platform, just one year after its debut. Apollo 3.0 includes ‘new solutions supporting valet parking, autonomous mini buses and autonomous microcars’. Baidu says the new solutions aim to help ‘prepare partners for volume production, evidence of which can already be seen in the volume production of NEOLIX AX1 L4 autonomous microcars for logistics and transport that are already operational in the Chinese cities of Xiongan and Changzhou’.

“Apollo 3.0 marks a new era for the volume production of autonomous vehicles. We believe that safety is the foundation of volume production. Apollo will continue to work with our partners to push forward the transition to intelligent vehicles from traditional vehicles,” said Zhenyu Li, Vice President and General Manager of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group.

Baidu says Apollo has now brought together 116 partners on the open platform. It laid out plans to achieve volume production of L3 autonomous vehicles by 2020 with BYD, China’s leading electric car manufacturer and has formed new strategic cooperations with Jaguar Land Rover, Valeo, Byton, Leopard Imaging and Suning Logistics. The platform has amassed more than 220,000 lines of code with over 10,000 developers recommending Apollo open source software.