Tencent joins the fray with Baidu in providing artificial intelligence applications for self-driving cars

Members of the alliance included Sebastian Thrun, who spearheaded Google’s driverless car and Beijing Automotive

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Beijing Automotive is a member of the Tencent alliance that pushes for AI application in autonomous driving. A Beijing Automotive Arcfox-7 electric sports car was on display at a Beijing auto show. Photo: Simon Song

Published: 4:48pm, 27 Aug 2017Updated: 10:41pm, 27 Aug 2017

Internet giant Tencent Holdings has formed an alliance with a clutch of industry players including Beijing Automotive Group (BAIC) to ramp up development and tech transfer of artificial intelligence (AI) that is used in autonomous driving.

The company whose social media service WeChat has 928 million monthly active user accounts, said it would bank on the alliance to not only support the research for self-driving but also the manufacturing of related products in future.

Chen Juhong, a vice president of Tencent said a certain number of vehicles with self-driving technologies would likely clog the streets in 2020, buoyed by the improvement in the development of advanced driver assistant system (ADAS).

“Tencent hopes to make an all-out effort to reinforce the development of AI technologies used in autonomous driving,” she said. “We want to be a ‘connector’ to help accelerate cooperation, innovation and industry convergence, contributing our humble efforts to the growth of the whole industry.”

Tencent, helmed by chairman and CEO Pony Ma Huateng, is accelerating co-operation with global players to push for AI applications in driverless car. Photo: Dickson Lee

She added that the market size of ADAS alone could reach 100 billion yuan (US$15 billion) in 2020, based on an annualised compound growth rate of 35 per cent.

We want to be a ‘connector’ to help accelerate cooperation, innovation and industry convergence, contributing our humble efforts to the growth of the whole industry

Chen Jun, Tencent

The members of the club established by Tencent include Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford University computer science professor who has been called the father of Google’s self-driving car; BAIC chairman Xu Heyi; Li Bin, founder and chairman of Chinese electric carmaker Nio; Stefan Greiner, director of Audi China’s autonomous driving and chassis development; and Li Jun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.