Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc. has teamed up with Singapore technology conglomerate Asia Mobility Industries (AMI) to establish a US$200 million joint venture fund to promote Baidu’s open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo.
Named Apollo Southeast Asia, the Singapore based fund will make direct investments in advanced mobility projects, technology exchanges, the establishment of research programs, and the commercialization of Baidu’s autonomous driving technologies in the region.
Apollo Southeast Asia also aims to attract strategic partners to the Apollo platform. The Apollo platform, which was launched in last April, has gathered more than 90 partners so far, including Udacity, Microsoft Corp. and TomTom NV, according to Baidu.
Baidu has announced plans to work with a number of partners to mass-producing autonomous vehicles using the Apollo platform. It aims to mass produce level 3 autonomous vehicles with Chery Automotive by 2020, and mass produce driverless minibuses with Chinese bus manufacturer King Long by the end of July 2018 .
Last month, it deployed five autonomous driving vehicles powered by its Apollo platform on a four kilometer test drive in Xiongan New Area, a new economic zone in Hebei province.
Source: China Money Network
