INTERNATIONAL – Licenses to allow road rests for self-driving cars that carry passengers were granted to Chinese artificial intelligence giant Baidu Friday by the government of Cangzhou city in northern China's Hebei Province.
A total of 30 car plates were given to Baidu's intelligent connected vehicles (ICV) at the 2019 China International Digital Economy Expo. This is the first time that Baidu's ICVs were issued car plates for road tests that carry passengers in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
A regulation on ICV road test management has also been issued in Cangzhou in support of ICV road testing.
Before the expo, Baidu and Cangzhou municipal government reached an agreement to work together on technologies of artificial intelligence, self-driving, cloud computing and big data to build a "smart Changzhou."
The China International Digital Economy Expo, held from Oct. 11 to 13, is jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Hebei provincial government.
Themed as "Digital Economy Leads High Quality Development," the expo is comprised of exhibitions, a forum on smart development of the Xiong'an New Area and investment promotion activities.
In July, Baidu joined hands with Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp to cooperate on areas related to artificial intelligence (AI) amid a push for self-driving cars.
Under their partnership, Geely and Toyota have joined Apollo, an autonomous driving platform by Baidu.
Baidu will provide Apollo Minibus, a software product for autonomous bus vehicles, to Toyota’s e-Palette vehicles in the future, and will work with the automaker to explore more uses of autonomous driving technologies, said Li Zhenyu, vice president of Baidu who is in charge of its intelligent driving unit.