Tech Heavyweight Baidu Reveals Self-Driving Electric Vehicles

Economy Jamie Simon
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As one of the biggest tech company in the world, Baidu is embarking on its journey of creating a driverless, all-electric vehicle. Other notable tech companies that are traveling this road include Apple, Google, and Uber. However, the Chinese internet company seems to be making a lot of progress, as it just put its self-driving, fully electric vehicle out for testing in China.

Baidu previously had some success testing its driverless tech on a fleet of BMW 3-Series GTs in December 2015. The test cars were driven publicly in Beijing and Wuhu, completing a rigorous 18.6-mile route, with successful U-turns, lane changes and merging on and off highways. BMW will, however, have no further connection with the company’s driverless car production, and specially modified Chery EQs will be used for this round of testing. Baidu plans to release its driverless cars geographically, with information such as the height of traffic lights and location of curbs to enable it map routes.

the tech company is to use its vehicles to provide a public, shuttle-sharing service, in similarity to American tech giant Uber. However, given that foreign rideshare companies have had difficulty penetrating the Chinese market so far, Baidu will have little or no competition once it has gotten its technology intact.

The Chinese company has often been called the “Google of China”, primarily because it is also a search engine company, and much like Google has expressed its full commitment to making its new driverless EV technology a reality. The company which announced its intentions in 2015 would have its first commercially available self-driving vehicle ready to go in China by 2018. Baidu also has its staff carrying out a similar test on the project in its office in Sunnyvale, California.