China’s national AI champion Baidu to test driverless delivery vans in US with Udelv for Walmart

One of China's tech champions will soon be testing its driverless technology in Arizona for customers including Walmart, underscoring how US companies remain potential buyers of Chinese technology even as the two countries remain locked in a race for tech supremacy.

Baidu, operator of China’s largest search engine, has entered a partnership deal with California-based autonomous delivery start-up Udelv that will see self-driving vans powered by its software offer delivery services to American retailers such as Walmart from February.

The delivery services will operate alongside robo-taxis from Alphabet Inc’s Waymo, putting China’s champion up against one of its biggest autonomous driving rivals in the US market. Nasdaq-listed Baidu announced the deal with Udelv at a launch event for its latest open self-driving platform – Apollo 3.5 – on the sidelines of the 2019 CES tech fair in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Under the deal, Apollo 3.5 will be used in Udelv’s new self-driving van model. Designed to address middle-range and last-mile delivery, the van can drive itself at up to 60 miles per hour and carry up to 32 customer orders per route.

“Baidu's Apollo brings us one step closer towards realising our mission of reinventing delivery by bringing autonomous vehicles to the e-commerce industry,” said Daniel Laury, co-founder and chief executive of Udelv, on Tuesday. “By using modules of the latest Apollo 3.5 software for our autonomous technology, we shortened our development cycle, accelerated innovation and facilitated our ability to scale.”