Baidu signs strategic agreement with Xiong’an New Area

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- On December 20, the board of Baidu Apollo was officially established. On the very same day, the first board meeting was held in Xiong’an New Area, a state-level new area in the Baoding area of Hebei province.

There are a total of 10 members in this board, namely Baidu, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Ford, NVIDIA, Chery, BAIC, FAW and King Long. Lu Qi, president and CPO of Baidu, was nominated as chairman. The board is responsible for setting the strategic direction for Apollo ecosystem. The members are to discuss the development, management of driverless vehicles in the city and to speed the formulation of related regulations and policies.

Baidu Apollo also brought to the meeting ten intelligent vehicles from its partners such as Daimler, Ford, Chery, BAIC, Great Wall, King Long and Idriverplus. What’s more, Baidu also demonstrated Apollo’s application in different kinds of vehicles, including passenger vehicles, commercial buses, logistics vehicles and motor sweepers. Apollo also tested its autonomous vehicles on the road of Xiong’an with the approval of the local government and the support from the local transportation department.

On the afternoon of December 20, Baidu also signed a strategic agreement with Xiong’an New Area to build the area an intelligent city. According to a statement from Xiong’an government, the cooperation covers many fields, such as autonomous driving, HMI, cloud computing, IoT.

Baidu Apollo, officially released on July 5, 2017, is an open autonomous driving platform for its partners to develop their own autonomous driving system. Up to now, the platform has more than 70 partners.