Baidu and Geely to Build Smart Electric Cars

The Chinese search engine firm Baidu has recently announced their collaboration with the car-making company Geely for the development and manufacturing of electric vehicles, which would help make the country achieve net-zero carbon emission.

For the advancement of the project for smart electric cars, the tech firm Baidu would be providing the ‘intelligent driving capability’ to be installed inside the vehicle, while Geely is in charge of its outer designing and manufacturing process.

Competition for smart electric cars across China

The firm Geely which is currently going forward with developing smart electric vehicles to limit harmful carbon discharge, is one of the largest automobile makers in China, and this business company is the owner of Volvo, while owns a significant share in the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, Daimler.

These two firms, Geely and Baidu, are in tough competition with Elon Musk’s clean energy firm Tesla, along with several other Chinese companies that are also looking forward to manufacturing smart electric cars, as it has become a requirement in this current day and age.

According to the co-founder and chief executive of Baidu Robin, the carmakers believes that they would be able to combine the expertise of smart transport system, autonomous driving capabilities and connection of vehicles with the expertise of Geely as they are one of the top automobile and electric vehicle manufacturing firm. And this partnership would allow both parties a successful project while paving the way for passenger smart electric cars in the future.

In the year 2017, Baidu was able to develop a perfectly working autonomous driving unit named Apollo, which was mainly able to supply technology that has been powered with artificial intelligence software and was only able to work with a handful of Chinese and international automobile companies.

China has become the top country that has the leading market for smart electric cars in 2021. According to the data record by the International Electric Agency, there has been around 7.2 million units of smart electric cars sold and were used on the roads for daily transportation throughout the world in the year 2019, out of which 47% of the total number were to be found in China.

It has been estimated by the S&P Platts data providers that by the year 2025, in the Asian country of China, the total sales of new cars would contain 20% of new energy vehicles as electric cars vs. gas cars, the automated vehicles working of batteries are much safer for the rapidly declining environment.

According to Mr. Li, China has been able to become the largest marketplace for the sale of electric vehicles around the world, and it has been observed that the consumers are demanding the smart electric cars to be further enhanced with intelligence in the upcoming generations.

Competitive rivals

The collaboration of Geely and Baidu for the development of an electric car is expected to face fierce competition, as multiple tech companies globally are trying to come up with smart electric cars. The giant firms, including Alphabet, Amazon, and Tencent, have been able to develop technology related to automobiles or were able to invest in the past recent years in smart-cars potential start-ups.

The e-commerce Chinese tech firm Alibaba has also been able to form smart electric vehicles joint venture with SAIC, which is a competitor of Geely. The ride-hailing application used in China, Didi Chuxing, has recently made a partnership with BYD carmakers for the development and manufacturing of automobiles that would specifically be designed for services like ride-hailing.

Apple x Hyundai

There has been an announcement circulating for a possible collaboration of South Korean automobile firm Hyundai with Apple. The stock shares for Hyundai have been observed to have surged about 20% on Friday, after the news that both firms are currently in the early stages of discussion for a possible partnership to develop a smart electric car.

Several hours later, Hyundai stated that they are consulting with several potential partners for the partnership to develop a smart electric car, without publicizing their possible deal with Apple.

It is reported by local news that both firms are expected to sign the agreement by the month of March this year, and the production would be started by 2024. It is estimated that there would be an increase in smart electric cars in 2022 in an attempt to save the environmental decline.

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