Baidu has joined with Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and Toyota Motor to cooperate on artificial and self-driving car technology.
The pair have joined Apollo, Baidu's autonomous driving platform, Reuters reported.
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Baidu will provide Apollo Minibus, a software product for autonomous bus vehicles, to Toyota e-Palette vehicles in the future, and will work with the automaker to consider more uses of autonomous driving technologies, Li Zhenyu, vice president of Baidu who is in charge of its intelligent driving unit, told the news agency.
Baidu would cooperate with Baidu on AI applications such as intelligent connectivity and smart mobility, CEO Robin Li and Geely chairman Li Shufu said at a yearly gathering where the company shows its AI .
Global automakers, large technology companies and startups are all engaged in self-driving efforts, but experts say it will be years before systems are ready to be rolled out, Reuters noted.
China wants to have its own players compete with Tesla and Waymo, the self-driving arm of Google parent Alphabet.
Beijing and Shanghai have previously announced local guidelines for self-driving tests and Baidu already has approval to test self-driving vehicles on some city streets, Reuters added.
