Baidu to start producing self-driving cars with FAW, Volvo in race for next crown in world’s biggest market
- Baidu to produce self-driving cars with FAW next year, with mass production slated for 2020
- Self-driving cars are seen as the next battleground for
Baidu pushed deeper into autonomous driving with plans to start producing self-driving passenger cars with the state-owned FAW Group next year, with similar plans to develop models with Volvo Cars for China, the world’s biggest passenger vehicle market.
The Beijing-based internet search giant, which has in recent years invested heavily in its Apollo autonomous driving platform, unveiled a joint developed self-driving model with FAW at the Baidu Tech 2018 conference on Thursday. The car is expected to become the first mass-produced driverless car in China when large-scale production takes place in 2020, according to FAW chairman Xu Liuping.
Baidu separately announced a similar plan with Volvo Cars to develop so-called level-four autonomous cars “over the next few years”.
While China boasts the world’s biggest car market, its home-grown brands mostly occupy the low- to mid-end of the market. Chinese consumers still continue to see foreign brands to be superior in quality and reliability to local marques despite the latter closing the gap over the years.
With autonomous driving and electrification, the value of the automobile shifts from the efficiency of the internal combustion engine to connectivity and the suite of add-on features that Chinese internet companies have a closer feel for local tastes and needs compared with global giants like Google that have been out of the market.
The artificial intelligence (AI) technology behind self-driving cars is also seen as an amalgamation of the advanced consumer and industrial technologies, spanning 5G mobile systems and new energy vehicles to manufacturing. This is in line with the strategic direction that the Chinese government is taking to push its enterprises to upgrade themselves and up the value chain of technology. Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday that China must develop, control and use AI to secure the country’s future in the next technological and industrial revolution.