Chinese technology giant Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) will establish a dedicated electric vehicle (EV) company and acquire a partner to manufacture such cars. This is according to an article published by Reuters on Thursday with reference to ‘two sources familiar with the matter’.
According to these sources, the manufacturer is the leading Chinese car manufacturer Geely. Some of the company’s current facilities will be adapted to manufacture the Baidu unit’s EVs. The tech company will contribute the software that forms the ‘brain’ of the cars, while Geely will take on the engineering. It is unknown what the financial and operating conditions of the Baidu / Geely arrangement may be.
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As for the dedicated company, Baidu will hold a majority stake in it and control 100% of its voting power.
Baidu has not yet commented on the Reuters article. This comes a few weeks after the news agency reported that Baidu is considering a venture in the EV field. At the time, it was reported that the company not only with Geely, but also with Guangzhou Automobile Group and Hongqi, on potential manufacturing partnerships.
Baidu is best known as a search engine operator, like its kind in the US Alphabet, it ventured the latest car technology.
Last year, for example, Baidu built its robotic action service Apollo Go in several Chinese cities. While it’s an advancement in advanced driving technology, it’s not a completely autonomous solution – a human driver is present when their help is needed to drive the vehicle.