Chinese tech titan Baidu and carmaking giant Geely to pour US$7.7 billion into making next-generation smart cars

Name: Back to the future: South Korean professor’s self-driving car was decades ahead of the curve
Uploaded: 2021-04-23T11:30:15.000Z
Duration: 2 min 6 s
Description: Back to the future: South Korean professor’s self-driving car was decades ahead of the curve

Jidu Auto, the electric vehicle venture formed by Baidu and Geely, said it will invest the money over the next five years and aims to deliver its first smart car by 2024

The two said in January they would team up to make smart electric cars, making use of Baidu’s intelligent driving technology and Geely’s car manufacturing expertise

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Baidu, which runs one of the world’s largest open autonomous-driving platforms. Photo: Bloomberg

Pearl LiuandDaniel Ren

Published: 7:30pm, 23 Apr 2021Updated: 4:27pm, 25 Apr 2021

Chinese technology titan Baidu and carmaking giant Geely are to pour 50 billion yuan (US$7.7 billion) into making next-generation cars.

Jidu Auto, the electric vehicle (EV) venture formed by Baidu and Geely in January, will invest the money over the next five years and aims to deliver its first smart car by 2024, Baidu confirmed in response to a Post inquiry.

Reuters first reported the plan earlier on Friday. Jidu’s CEO Xia Yiping told the news agency the company will aim to bring out a new model every year or 18 months after the first one.

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Back to the future: South Korean professor’s self-driving car was decades ahead of the curve

Baidu, which runs one of the world’s largest open autonomous-driving platforms, and Geely have been pushing to strengthen their presence in China’s fiercely competitive electric car market. The American giant Tesla leads a field of home-grown start-ups like Nio, Xpeng and Li Auto in the world’s biggest car market.

In January, the two said they would team up to make smart electric vehicles, making use of Baidu’s intelligent driving capabilities and Geely’s car manufacturing expertise.

A month later they appointed Xia Yiping, co-founder and former chief technology officer of the bicycle-share company Mobike, to head the new EV venture which they later named JiDu Auto.

Baidu’s smart car initiative has come as it pushes to monetise the autonomous driving technologies it has been developing since 2013 within its Baidu Apollo division.