Recently, according to Reuters and relevant Chinesse media reports, a person familiar with the matter disclosed that Baidu is considering producing its own electric vehicles and has negotiated with Geely Automobile, Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) and FAW Group on this possibility, or form a holding company. A majority-owned joint venture, but no agreement has been reached yet.
In response to this, we have collected various responses from the Internet. Baidu is indeed considering commissioning an OEM model or establishing a majority-owned joint venture with an automaker, and Baidu also has self-developed autonomous driving technology and interconnection infrastructure, but Baidu declined to comment on this matter.
However, Guangzhou Automobile said that the company has a strategic partnership with Baidu, but any further cooperation is only under discussion; while Geely said it was not familiar with the matter, and FAW did not respond to comment at all.
The news that Baidu making car is a reasonable and unexpected thing for people in the industry. Baidu, one of three Internet giant company, has made early efforts in the automotive field. Baidu started its preliminary layout in 2013, and launched the Carlife strategy and autonomous vehicles in 2015. In 2015, Baidu’s autonomous driving division plans to realize the commercialization of autonomous vehicles in three years and mass production in five years.
Baidu has recently spoken frequently in the field of car leasing. On December 11, the car-rental platform izuche.com officially launched Baidu’s autonomous driving service in Beijing. The autonomous driving taxi stations in Haidian and Yizhuang do not need to make an appointment, people can experience the autonomous driving service by placing an order directly.
In fact, in recent years, similar cooperation has also been shown in other companies. For example, Huawei and Changan Automobile have teamed up to build a high-end smart car brand, Alibaba and SAIC have also jointly launched the high-end smart pure electric vehicle project “Zhiji Auto”.
