China's Google equivalent search engine, Baidu which specializes in Internet-related services and artificial intelligence will set up a company to produce electric vehicles in collaboration with Chinese automaker Geely.
According to Tech Crunch Baidu, a dominant player in China's internet search market will provide smart driving technologies Geely, which has an impending merger with Sweden's Volvo, will be in charge of car design and manufacturing.
This move marks Baidu to become the latest company in China's internet industry to enter the EV space. Back in November, news came that Alibaba and Chinese state-owned carmaker SAIC Motor had joined hands to produce electric cars.
Ride-share Company Didi and EV maker BYD co-developed a model for ride-hailing, which is already attracting customers like Ideanomics. Meanwhile, the stocks of China's Tesla challengers, such as Xpeng, Li Auto, and NIO, have been in a steady uptrend over the past year.
Baidu's car push is part of its effort to diversify a business relying on search advertising revenue. New media platforms such as ByteDance's Toutiao news aggregator and short-video app Douyin come with their own search feature and have gradually eroded the share of traditional search engines like Baidu.
As per Tech Crunch, this new venture will operate as a Baidu subsidiary where Geely will serve as a strategic partner and Baidu units like Apollo and Baidu Maps will contribute capabilities. The firm will cover the entire industrial chain, including vehicle design, research and development, manufacturing, sales, and service.
It's unclear how Baidu's tie-up with Geely will affect Apollo's operation, though Baidu promised in its announcement that it will "uphold its spirit of open collaboration across the AI technology industry, striving to work closely with its ecosystem partners to advance the new wave of intelligent transformation."
( With inputs from ANI )
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