Baidu Self Driving Bus to Hit the Road in Three Years

Baidu is the China Internet giant that holds number one position in the China's search engine market. Since 2013, the company has launched its driverless car program. Baidu is now working with BMW AG to launch its self driving bus in three years after a successful driverless car test in Beijing.

Xinhua reported that Baidu announced last Friday, that its driverless car has finished road tests and succeeded in automatic driving in mixed road conditions. The vehicle was tested to drive starting from Baidu's office in Zhongguancun Science Park to the Olympic Forest Park, via the G7 Beijing-Urumqi highway and the Fifth Ring Road before returning via the same route. It is able to reach maximum speed of 100km/hr (62 mph) during test.

The car will be making its first appearance in the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen Township in Zhejiang Province from December 16 to 18. The Bejing test is a preparation to that event as Wang Jin, Senior Vice President of Baidu said "It is a great challenge to test in Beijing, a city with so many complicated road conditions, but luckily we made it," because "Automatic driving faces challenges in a variety of driving conditions such as bad weather and congestion."

Following the success, as reported by Reuters, Baidu announced on Monday, that it will put a self-driving buses on the road in three years and mass produce them within five years. The company has established a business unit for its automobile sector with Wang Jin leading the new business unit.

In its new automotive business unit, Baidu continued its partnership with BMW AG to develop an autonomous passenger vehicle. For its driverless car testing, Baidu used BMW compact car, the BMW 3 Series GT.

Baidu is really serious in developing its self driving car. As Yibada reported that last year, Baidu hired Stanford researcher Andrew Ng, who helped set up Google's artificial-intelligence effort, to head its research center in Sunnyvale, California. Baidu said that Ng is among the researchers involved in Baidu's car project.

Baidu is not the only Chinese company that prepare a self driving car for public transportation. In September, Zhengzhou Yutong Bus Co. Ltd. launched its prototype of self-driving bus. The bus was able to complete a 33 kilometers (20 miles) route on an intercity road in central China.

Other modern cities in the world have used self driving bus, like Swiss city of Zion and Greece's city of Trikala.While in Japan, Tokyo will start its unmanned taxi service starting next year according to Boston Consulting Group report as quoted by Yibada.

The self driving bus will be a new venture for Baidu in transportation industry. Last September, Baidu has initiated an investment for $1.2 billion in Uber China ride sharing service.