Baidu banks on open platform for self-drive cars to recoup loss
Baidu, the operator of China’s dominant online search engine, is banking on its artificial intelligence business to get it back on track after its sales took a hit from a medical advertising scandal last year.
Instead of marketing self-driving cars directly to customers which the firm had been developing, Baidu is hoping that its AI platform, called Project Apollo, which offers open-source and complete autonomous software to car manufacturers, will be a win-win deal for itself and carmakers.
“We are not here to disrupt. We want to empower the OEMs,” said Lu Qi, the company’s president and chief operating officer, at the D.Live Asia technology conference in Hong Kong on Friday.
He also said that Baidu would announce its self-driving car partners in July.
The race is on for in AI-powered products such as self-driving cars among technology firms. Lu believes that the US internet giant Google currently has the upper hand. However, he is confident that Baidu will take pole position in three to five years because the ecosystem of Apollo will be ahead of any closed system.
