Geely joins the driverless car game with Baidu’s help
Jerrica · Jan 11, 2021 11:43 AM
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Baidu Apollo fleet collaboration with other Chinese brands
Geely Holdings will join forces with Baidu to build a driverless electric car on Geely’s new Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) platform.
The strategic partnership will focus primarily on the joint research, development, and production of intelligent and connected electric vehicles. Note, “intelligent” here meaning self-driving cars.
Baidu Apollo fleet collaboration with Hongqi brand testing
The partnership could see the Geely Group roll out their first set of autonomous cars, or better known as driverless cars, as it will feature technology from Baidu’s Apollo fleet of autonomous driving vehicles.
Baidu’s Apollo programme is widely acknowledged as the most successful driverless car programme currently. Not only has the programme testing recorded no major incidents after travelling 7 million kilometres but it has also recorded to have safely carried more than 210,000 passengers.
In China, Baidu is now the leading autonomous driving player as the company works to increase the people’s confidence in driverless cars via robotaxis in specific locations in the country.
This is also not the first time that Baidu is teaming up with a car manufacturer to create autonomous cars, the company previously worked with Chinese manufacturer Hongqi. But this is the first time that Baidu is looking to create a driverless electric vehicle (EV).
Robotaxis in China
Other than the Apollo autonomous driving technology, the car will also be fitted with DuerOS for Apollo and Baidu Maps.
It would be interesting to see how Geely and Baidu’s pure electric driverless car will turn out. Meanwhile, Geely is putting the SEA platform to good use, just recently it was reported that Smart brand, Geely’s new joint venture with Mercedes-Benz, too will build cars based on the platform.
There isn’t a time in memory that doesn’t involve staring at cars. After discovering the excitement of watching Schumacher vs Hakkinen, Formula 1 became a major part of life. The love for cars and F1 ultimately led to a job with CAR Magazine. The untimely death of the magazine meant a hiatus from cars at lifestyle women’s magazine Marie Claire before another opportunity came knocking again.
