Baidu CEO wants China's help to develop self-driving cars
China needs to put new regulations and financial subsidies in place to quicken the development of autonomous vehicles or risk getting left behind, the billionaire co-founder of the nation's largest search engine said.
Baidu Inc. CEO Robin Li, whose company wants to commercialize self-driving vehicles, wants Beijing to take the lead in getting Chinese enterprises to collaborate on research and craft a regulatory framework.
His proposal was included among others prepared for presentation at an annual meeting of regulators. China has set a goal for 10 to 20 percent of vehicles to be highly autonomous by 2025, and for 10 percent of vehicles to be fully self-driving in 2030. But Li thinks Beijing needs to do more to develop this technology.
"Major developing countries are employing a host of measures to support research into, and testing of, autonomous driving," Li said in a document outlining his suggestions. "But the majority of our country's laws and policies simply aren't suitable for the development of self-driving cars."
Last year, Baidu formed a self-driving vehicle team in Silicon Valley that now employs 100 researchers and engineers.
Baidu has partnered with chipmaker Nvidia Corp., tested its autonomous vehicles in eastern Chinese cities and earned a permit from California to conduct road tests. The Internet giant plans to have self-driving vehicles ply China's roads by 2018, with mass production by 2021.
China is seeking to shed its image as a cheap manufacturer of products with little value-added content. The government is instead pushing to create more sophisticated products and services, keeping pace with a global trend toward digitization.
Li also lamented the state of China's space industry. As with self-driving vehicles, he wants Beijing to enact policies to encourage private investment in rockets and satellites.
"We need to slowly resolve the current complexity of obtaining approvals, the closed nature of the market, the lack of competitiveness and other issues," he wrote. "We need to attract talent and encourage innovation, to lift our nation's aerospace industry's competitiveness on an international stage."
His proposal was included among others prepared for presentation at an annual meeting of regulators. China has set a goal for 10 to 20 percent of vehicles to be highly autonomous by 2025, and for 10 percent of vehicles to be fully self-driving in 2030. But Li thinks Beijing needs to do more to develop this technology.
"Major developing countries are employing a host of measures to support research into, and testing of, autonomous driving," Li said in a document outlining his suggestions. "But the majority of our country's laws and policies simply aren't suitable for the development of self-driving cars."
Last year, Baidu formed a self-driving vehicle team in Silicon Valley that now employs 100 researchers and engineers.
Baidu has partnered with chipmaker Nvidia Corp., tested its autonomous vehicles in eastern Chinese cities and earned a permit from California to conduct road tests. The Internet giant plans to have self-driving vehicles ply China's roads by 2018, with mass production by 2021.
China is seeking to shed its image as a cheap manufacturer of products with little value-added content. The government is instead pushing to create more sophisticated products and services, keeping pace with a global trend toward digitization.
Li also lamented the state of China's space industry. As with self-driving vehicles, he wants Beijing to enact policies to encourage private investment in rockets and satellites.
"We need to slowly resolve the current complexity of obtaining approvals, the closed nature of the market, the lack of competitiveness and other issues," he wrote. "We need to attract talent and encourage innovation, to lift our nation's aerospace industry's competitiveness on an international stage."
