Alibaba enters the global stage of autonomous vehicle operators according to a report by the South China Morning Post. It joins its rival Internet competitors Baidu and Tencent. And that Alibaba is serious in this new market segment, shows the statement of an Alibaba spokeswoman. It is planned to “hire 50 additional experts for its AI research laboratory”.

Autonomous driving of level 4 is aimed for
It is assumed that Alibaba now regularly conducts driving tests with autonomous vehicles and thus builds up competence for autonomous driving. The goal of the three Chinese competitors is to reach level 4 in autonomous driving. This is to be equated with almost independent driving of the vehicles, virtually without human intervention.

Baidu, who last November was named national champion in China’s self-propelled car efforts by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, is also working on Level 4 skills.

Self-propelled cars are increasingly seen as a fusion of the latest technologies, including 5G, Artificial Intelligence etc. They are considered the holy grail of the next generation of technologies. Our way of living and working together is being revolutionized here.

China will become the world’s largest market for autonomous vehicles and mobility services by 2030, according to a report by McKinsey consultants. The market potential is estimated at more than 500 billion US dollars. No wonder then that the efforts of the Chinese are picking up speed.

Especially since the Chinese play several factors into the cards. First of all, they benefit from extremely friendly legislation on the development and testing of autonomous vehicles. In addition, the financial means of the big players are almost inexhaustible. Another advantage of Chinese innovators is that they do not (or hardly) have an existing OEM producer structure. Therefore, neither the Chinese producers nor the government have to take into account the potentially threatening destruction of jobs.

Alibaba’s research on autonomous driving dates back to March last year when Wang Gang, a former associate professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and specialist in computer vision and autonomous driving, was hired as lead scientist at Alibaba AI Labs.

The initiative is now seen as an extension of Alibaba’s ambitions to connect devices and control urban traffic via smart brains.
“Our vision is to build an intelligently networked world through transformative (Internet of Things) technologies,” said Simon Hu Xiaoming, president of Alibaba Cloud, at a cloud computing conference last month. Within the next five years, a network of 10 billion connected devices is planned.

Further cooperations planned for autonomous driving

The e-commerce giant, the parent company of the South China Morning Post, also entered into a partnership with SAIC Motor, the largest car manufacturer in the country, to launch Internet-enabled vehicles with Alibaba’s AliOS operating system. Another project to equip a vehicle model with AliOS will begin this year in cooperation with the Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile Company.

What effects does this’arms race’ in China have on the European market? Delivery traffic is thirsting for new solutions for city centres. Autonomously operated delivery vehicles will serve the last mile more efficiently than the current delivery services of parcel services or deliverers. However, in addition to the technical obstacles, regulatory conditions in Europe will be a major obstacle to the introduction of new technologies. It remains to be hoped that the old Europe will not be left behind in this automated supply innovation.

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