Tesla Faces Automated Driving Rival in Geely and Baidu EV
Competition is intensifying in China's automated-driving scene with the arrival of Jiyue 01, the first electric vehicle from a joint venture between Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. and Chinese search and tech giant Baidu Inc.
Launching Friday, the sport-utility vehicle is equipped with Baidu's Apollo platform, which has been in development for 10 years and used on driverless vehicles since 2016. While the Jiyue 01 still deploys a high-precision map for assisted driving, it is moving toward the pure-vision approach, which mostly uses cameras to assess the surrounding environment. Tesla similarly eschews more costly Lidars and ultrasonic radars.
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“Tesla is a pioneer in the intelligent car and a leader in global sales,” Luo Gang, chief operating officer of the Geely-Baidu Jiyue venture, told reporters at a briefing. “But from the perspective of handling and user interface, I think we'd win. Compared with the Model Y, which is the closest to our car, from the space, design, interiors, I personally think the Jiyue 01 is better.”
China is the world's biggest EV market and dozens of brands are looking to stand out with new technologies. While Tesla's Model Y is one of the top-selling EVs, the system it markets as Full Self-Driving isn't available in the country.
Other rivals include Xpeng Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co., which have also developed sophisticated automated-driving systems that enable vehicles to navigate independently and park themselves.
Chinese law hasn't yet defined whether the driver or the assisted-driving system would take legal responsibility in the event of an accident. Most manufacturers are taking a cautious approach and sticking with Level 2 technology, where a
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