Alibaba confirms developing self-driving vehicles

Wang Gang, Chief Scientist at the company’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Labs, is leading the research team and it has made rapid progress, the report quoted Alibaba as saying. 

Xinhua news agency said the research aims to reach Level 4, which means the self-driving vehicle can fully drive itself without human intervention in certain circumstances.  

Chinese authorities issued regulations on April 12 to allow local road tests for intelligent connected vehicles, which covers different degrees of autonomous driving. Alibaba has conducted regular road tests of its self-driving vehicles and the company was looking to hire an additional 50 experts to boost the technology.

Alibaba’s move follows its rivals, Baidu and Tencent, two other Chinese Internet conglomerates that are also developing self-driving vehicles.