BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Baidu Inc. (BIDU) is pushing aggressively ahead with autonomous vehicles, including plans to release a fully self-driving bus in China next year, the Wall Street Journal quoted the company's chief executive as saying.
Baidu is betting it can be a major player in self-driving vehicles with its open-source autonomous-vehicle software called Apollo that it unveiled this year, Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li said at The Wall Street Journal's WSJ D.Live technology conference Tuesday.
Li reportedly said Baidu is joining with Chinese car maker BAIC Motor Corp. to mass produce partially autonomous cars running Apollo by 2019, and fully autonomous cars by 2021.
But first, Baidu aims to complete a fully self-driving bus - running on a designated route - with a Chinese bus maker by next year.
Baidu is hoping its open-source software is more appealing to car makers wary of joining with Waymo, the driverless-car unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc.
Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX