Alibaba’s Banma Reaches Strategic Cooperation with Chongqing Municipal People’s Government

On August 23, Chongqing Municipal People’s Government signed a contract with Banma, a subsidiary of Alibaba, to reach a strategic cooperation deal. In the future, Chongqing will rely on the Banma OS automobile operating system to establish an open source platform for an intelligent connected vehicle operating system, and promote the introduction of industrial chain enterprises and ecological construction.

According to public information, Banma is a tech firm jointly invested by Alibaba Group Holding Limited and SAIC Motor. The company mainly focuses on the research and development of the basic software needed for intelligent automobile operating systems.

Banma has built three generations of operating systems, the first of which was an automobile OS. This OS is mainly for the Android system and was installed on the world’s first Internet car, the Roewe RX5, in 2016. The second generation product is the console which adopts a distributed heterogeneous mode and has been put into use in the high-end intelligent electric vehicle IM L7. The third generation is the AliOSDrive, the intelligent operating system of the whole vehicle, the core of which is to support unmanned vehicles.

Wang Kai, vice president of Banma, said that in the future, the company will mainly focus on the field of automated driving intelligent operating systems. In addition, Banma is also making efforts to build an integrated solution for intelligent automobiles and digital transportation, implementing the exchange, sharing and safe use of intelligent information such as people, cars, roads and clouds, and becoming a software base for the online interconnection of intelligent automobiles and digital intelligent upgrading in the automobile industry and transportation fields.

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Up to now, the car companies adopting Banma intelligent automobile solution include SAIC, FAW and Volkswagen with nearly 3 million intelligent automobiles having beenproduced.

In addition, Banma has established an initial industrial ecology. In the field of computer chips, Banma has established a “New Automotive Chip Alliance” with many automobile chip companies such as Qualcomm, Cadence, Xilinx, Horizon Robotics, Heizhima and SemiDrive, focusing on the extensive integration of chips and operating systems.