Highlights of BAT layouts in autonomous driving industry

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- With Alibaba confirming driverless vehicle test last month, it has joined Baidu and Tencent – which are collectively known as BAT – in the autonomous driving industry. The three Chinese Internet giants currently race to make layouts in this booming field. Gasgoo sorted some events as below to show how BAT builds their own ecosystem around autonomous vehicles.  

Baidu

Possessing the splendid autonomous driving platform Apollo, Baidu runs much ahead of its two rivals, Alibaba and Tencent. Later in April, Apollo welcomed it 100th partner BYD. So far, the Internet giant has extended Apollo's partnerships across the world, including not only renowned automakers like FAW Group, Changan Auto and Great Wall Motor, but also some world-class Tier 1 suppliers such as Bosch and Continental AG.

Additionally, Baidu has heretofore obtained autonomous vehicle road test licenses from three cities, Beijing, Fuzhou and Chongqing.

On March 1, 2017, the company announced that it had established the Intelligent Driving Group (IDG) which was headed by Lu Qi, Baidu's COO and president. This was a significant step to speed up its autonomous driving cause through a massive integration of three units, the autonomous driving unit (L4), the intelligent vehicle unit (L3) and IoV (Internet of Vehicles) unit.

In capital market, Baidu also did a great number of investments and acquisitions. For instance, the company bought out tech startups like Raven Tech and KITT.AI last year and put investments in such companies as NIO, WM Motor and Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur, which is currently a part of the Apollo ecology. 

Tencent

Following Baidu, Tencent also obtained its first ICV (intelligent-connected vehicle) license plate from Shenzhen municipal government on May 14. The government only issued one plate this time to Tencent Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory, who has been allowed to test its autonomous vehicle on public road after the government designates the testing sectors.

Earlier in April, Tencent's autonomous vehicle made its first public presence on the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing. The autonomous vehicle is a white converted SUV equipped with a large-sized Lidar on the roof and cameras, millimeter-wave radar around the body.

On April 12, Tencent and Chinese automaker Chongqing Changan officially signed a cooperation agreement to establish an ICV joint venture. Both parties will focus on developing IoV integration solutions as well as relevant operational businesses and services.

A few days later, Tencent and the state-owned automaker FAW Group inked a strategic cooperation framework agreement in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) area. The cooperation between two parties will focus on four major fields, scenario research, information security, IoV ecology as well as cloud platform and big data. Reportedly, Tencent's Keen Security Lab will provide FAW Group with IoV security solutions. Moreover, two companies will co-build service ecology relying on Tencent's technical resources of social search engine, electronic map, entertainment and payment instruments and make researches in such areas as AI, targeting marketing, big data analysis, etc. 

FAW Group is Tencent's sixth automaker partner. In November last year, the Internet company launched its ICV solution dubbed “AI in Car” and announced the cooperation with GAC Group, Chongqing Changan, Geely Auto, BYD and Dongfeng Liuzhou. 

Tencent's investments in automakers also reflect its ambition in auto area. In March 2017, Tencent had bought 5% share in Tesla and became the automakers' fifth largest shareholder. What's more, Tencent and Baidu had led a $600 million funding round in the Shanghai-based electric car maker NIO, who obtained China's first batch of ICV road test licenses in Shanghai along with SAIC Motor. 

Alibaba

In the middle of April, Alibaba confirmed the news that it was researching and developing L4 (and higher level) driverless vehicle technologies. Meanwhile, some vehicles (reportedly, the Lincoln MKZ refreshed models) have already been tested on roads and dozens of vehicles have been under development.  

Besides, the company revealed that under the leadership of Professor Wang Gang, chief scientist of Ali A.I. Labs and one of MIT Technology Review's 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2017, the autonomous driving research was proceeding rapidly.

In January this year, Alibaba's iDST (Institute of Data Science and Technologies) took the championship in pedestrian detection, which also refreshed its ranking in KITTI, the global authoritative leaderboard in machine vision algorithm. Meanwhile, in a competition raised by the renowned dataset of pedestrian re-identification the Market1501, Alibaba ranked No.1 worldwide with its first-target hit rate up to 96.17%. 

In September last year, Alibaba officially announced that its operation system YunOS would be upgraded into AliOS with driving scenarios as highlight. 

Before that, Alibaba and SAIC Motor built a joint venture dubbed Banma to offer integral Intelligent-connected vehicle solutions to auto industry.

Alibaba also became one of major investors of Chinese EV startup Xpeng Motors whose founder and chairman were former president of Alibaba Mobile Business Group. Moreover, the Internet giant also put investments in some AI companies, such as Face++ and SenseTime, and several AI chip providers like Cambricon and DeepPhi Tech.