Baidu Establishes Development of Autonomous Vehicle and Aims to Achieve Mass Production in 5 Years

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai Dec 15) Baidu, the largest search engine in Chinese worldwide, announced yesterday to establish business division for the development of autonomous driving technology. And Wang Jing, the vice president of Baidu, will serve as the general manager of this division.

Last week, Baidu announced that its autonomous vehicle successfully finished the driving under several different complex road conditions and fully performed some complicated movements like automatically changing lane and slowing down during driving. The unmanned vehicle set off from Baidu’s headquarters, drove into G7 Jingxin expressway and arrived at the Olympic forest park through the fifth-ring road. Then it turned back, finishing about 40 kilometers of road test.

Baide described that its autonomous vehicle had created the history of China’s autonomous driving technology by overcoming the most complex road conditions, performing the most comprehensive movement and knowing the environment in the most accurate way.

However, someone released that all these that the autonomous vehicle of Baidu had finished had been done by a research and development team in campus several years ago. And the road test this team finished got to 100 kilometers, more than that of Baidu’s autonomous vehicle.

During his speech, Wang Jing set a goal that Baidu would bring its autonomous vehicles to market in three years and achieve mass production in five years. And autonomous vehicles will be first brought to ten trial cities in China three years later.

But given that the road test costs a lot, it is necessary for Baidu to figure out how to reduce the cost if it wants to realize the goal in three years.