EDITORIAL – Baidu well-positioned to tap opportunities in China’s self-driving vehicle market

The growing network of partners for ‘Apollo’ open-source platform and investment in technology start-ups will further boost Baidu’s position as a strong self-driving vehicle technology company

Last year, in its inaugural ‘Baidu Create’ artificial intelligence (AI) developer conference in Beijing (China), Baidu launched its ‘Apollo’ open-source platform to speed up development and production of autonomous vehicles. The company decided to keep Apollo open-source as it wanted to position the platform as “the Android of Auto”. Baidu invited all companies, including automakers and suppliers, working on self-driving technologies to join the platform to accelerate development and reduce time to market.