Baidu for technology and Geely for car building.
News just in that two big Chinese companies have come together this January to start building intelligent electric vehicles for the global market. Geely, itself is already building high technology electric vehicles under its sub brand Lynk & Co and also its Volvo owned subsidiary Polestar.
Baidu, Inc. a leading Internet platform and AI company, today announced its plan to establish a company to produce intelligent electric vehicles (EV), and that it has entered into a strategic partnership with multinational auto manufacturer Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (Geely). In November 2018, Baidu reached an agreement with Volvo Cars to jointly develop and make electric and fully autonomous drive-compatible cars for China which was at the time the largest car market in the world. Earlier the same year, Baidu was talking to Daimler on developing an autonomic driving platform.
Baidu will provide intelligent driving capabilities to power the passenger vehicles for the new venture, and Geely, which holds the distinction of best-selling Chinese automobile brand in past years under the Volvo and Geely brands, will contribute its expertise in automobile design and manufacturing.
“At Baidu, we have long believed in the future of intelligent driving and have over the past decade invested heavily in AI to build a portfolio of world-class self-driving services. China has become the world’s largest market for EVs, and we are seeing EV consumers demanding next generation vehicles to be more intelligent.” said Robin Li, Co-founder and CEO of Baidu.
“As a top Chinese automaker with global reach, Geely has the unique experience and resources to design, produce and market energy-efficient, reliable and safe automobiles in large scale. We believe that by combining Baidu’s expertise in smart transportation, connected vehicles and autonomous driving with Geely’s expertise as a leading automobile and EV manufacturer, the new partnership will pave the way for future passenger vehicles.”
Baidu, Inc. is a leading search engine, knowledge and information centered Internet platform and AI company. Their collaboration with Geely is like what Google did back in 2009 when they announced their intention to build a self driving car. By 2016, Google had their self driving car project ‘Waymo’ on the road and with Americans taking free rides. The same year Uber, Tesla, Ford, General Motors and even Baidu announcing their intention to start self-driving cars for sale. By 2020 Waymo announced that after 1.6 miles of tests around the country, its self-driving car was involved in 18 crashesand 29 near-miss collisions during 2019.
Waymo had approximately 600 vehicles as part of its fleet. More than 300 vehicles were operating in an approximately 100 square mile service area that included the small towns of Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe and even though its fully driverless cars are restricted to an area that is only half that size. (Waymo hasn’t disclosed how many of its vehicles operate without safety drivers.)
Between January and December 2019, Waymo’s vehicles with trained safety drivers drove 6.1 million miles. In addition, from January 2019 through September 2020, its fully driverless vehicles drove 65,000 miles. Taken together, the company says this represents “over 500 years of driving for the average licensed US driver,” citing a 2017 survey of travel trends by the Federal Highway Administration.
