China likely to formulate policy for testing driverless cars at the beginning of next year

Shanghai (Gasgoo)-On Nov. 16, Wu Xuebin, Vice President of Baidu, revealed that the legalization of autonomous vehicles is on the track, and a number of Chinese cities will enact regulations to allow road tests of autonomous vehicles during the New Year's Day and the Spring Festival. Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, China's Internet giant, admitted at the 2017 Baidu World Conference that he was fined because he took a driverless car on 5th ring road in Beijing. At the meantime, he also declared that the autonomous vehicle integrated with Baidu's technologies will achieve mass production next year. Baidu also opened up more functions of Apollo platform at the conference.

During the intelligent driving forum, Baidu also also released its Apollo intelligent onboard system. Supported by Baidu's Duer OS, the onboard system offers seven opening-up abilities, such as intelligent voice assistant, facial recognition and AR navigation, etc.

Baidu had made great efforts to accelerate the pace of mass production of autonomous vehicles. For example, it had partnered with King Long to mass-produce driverless buses by the end of July 2018. It's also working with JAC and BAIC to launch Level 3 featured autonomous vehicles in 2019, and with Chery in 2020. Apollo has now attracted more than 70 global partners, including automakers like Hyundai, Ford, Daimler, and Bosch, among others.