Baidu’s former self-driving chief offers test rides of autonomous cars in Guangzhou amid lawsuit
JingChi, the start-up founded by Baidu’s former autonomous driving chief, has launched a three-month public demonstration of its fleet of self-driving cars on an island located at the centre of the capital of Guangdong province.
Unfazed by a lawsuit accusing him of stealing technology from China’s largest online search provider, Wang Jing, the former general manager of Baidu’s autonomous driving unit, is now offering test rides of his new company’s fleet of self-driving cars to the general public in the southern coastal city of Guangzhou.
JingChi, the self-driving technology start-up that Wang co-founded in April last year, launched on Tuesday a three-month, public test ride programme as part of its goal to be the first company to achieve large-scale, commercial deployment of Level 4 autonomous vehicles in China.
The Level 4 category means a highly automated vehicle that can run without human input in specific conditions, such as a type of road or geographic area.
All test rides by JingChi are to be conducted within the government-established Guangzhou International Biotech Island, which covers a 1.8-square kilometre (0.69-square mile) area located in the geographic centre of the capital of Guangdong province.
JingChi, which is headquartered in the Guangzhou Development Zone in the city’s Huangpu district, said in a statement that its trial will enable “the general public to experience the future of transport”, while the firm continued to collect data on open roads before expanding its self-driving car tests.