Baidu Plans to Mass Produce Self-driving Vehicles with BAIC by 2021

At the night of October 13, it is reported that during the day the agreement singing ceremony for Baidu and BAIC Group was held in Beijing Vehicles Industry R&D Base, where both parties agreed to cooperate in self-driving, Internet of Vehicles, and cloud computing service and build “AI Plus Vehicles” ecosystem.

On the ceremony, both parties announced that they will utilize the open Apollo platform, BAIC Group’s vehicle platform, and Baidu’s core AI technology to produce vehicles with Level 3 autonomous features by 2019 before moving on to fully self-driving Level 4 cars by 2021.

Besides, Baidu will integrate Internet of Vehicles featuring DuerOS, cybersecurity, image recognition into BAIC’s vehicles, producing one-stop products of Internet of Vehicles.

According to the estimate of both companies, by the end of 2018, all self-owned brand vehicles of BAIC Group will install Apollo platform. A year later, the total number of BAIC Group’s vehicles with Apollo will exceed 1 million. Moreover, they will also cooperate in cloud service, aiming to build cloud ecosystem and explore big-data-based value-added service such as smart transportation and mobile travel.

According to the plan, solutions raised by both parties will gradually apply to BAIC’s passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles and NEVs.

Participants at the ceremony include Robin Li, founder, CEO, and president of Baidu, Liang Zhixiang, vice president and assistant to CEO of Baidu, Li Zhenyu, general manager of Baidu’ s smart driving group; on the BAIC’s side, Xu Heyi, the party general and president, Zhang Xiyong, deputy party secretary and general manager, participated in the ceremony.

“A century ago, vehicles developed from zero to one, transforming people’s way of travel, creating new industry system, and leading the frontier innovation of manufacturing. Today, Baidu join hands with BAIC to facilitate the “zero to one” transformation featuring innovation and application for self-driving cars. We will push vehicle industry and even the level of manufacturing to a whole new historic period.”Said Robin Li.