Baidu Inc. Plans to Start Mass-Production of Driverless Cars in 5 Years

Adding its name to the front runners for driverless cars, Chinese tech giant Baidu today pronounced its aim to initiate mass-production of driverless cars in 5 years in an endeavour to one-up US rivals like Google and Tesla Motors. Ya-Qin Zhang, President, Baidu Inc., elaborated the company's roadmap in relevance to autonomous vehicle technology, saying Baidu plans to commercialise the technology in 3 years and realise mass production in five years.

Zhang told state-run Xinhua news agency that the core technology of Baidu's driverless cars was the "Baidu car brain", which includes high-precision electronic mapping, positioning, sensing and decision-making and control systems.

While the company has already completed its first road test of automatic driving in mixed road conditions, it intends to organise more road tests in various weather, road and traffic conditions in ten Chinese cities.