It is no secret that many tech companies and carmakers are working on making self-driving cars a reality. In fact over in China, internet search giant Baidu is making some progress of their own and had previously teamed up with the likes of BMW and Microsoft to help further their self-driving car efforts.
However it seems that Baidu’s interest does not lie just with cars, but with transportation in general because during The Wall Street Journal’s D.Live conference, Baidu’s CEO Robin Li revealed that the company had plans to launch a self-driving bus in China. Li announced that the company is working with a large bus maker in China and plans to have a self-driving bus route running in the country by next year.
This is actually not the first time we’re hearing about public transportation going down the self-driving route. Over in Singapore, the country had launched various initiatives, such as driverless pods that can ferry people in neighborhoods to nearby bus stops, or the country’s Nanyang Technological University where they plan to launch an autonomous shuttle bus to ferry students around campus.
It will be interesting to see if Baidu can get a self-driving bus up and running in the country next year. For the most part, self-driving technology is still very much in the testing phase due to various legal and regulatory hurdles that need to be overcome before it can be fully commercialized.
Filed in . Read more about Baidu and Self-Driving Cars.