Baidu has shifted from a search engine to China’s leading autonomous driving company, with Apollo Park as its base for autonomous driving and Apollo Go taxi service operating in 24 Chinese cities and four overseas locations, currently at Level 4 in designated areas.

Other AI players like ByteDance, GALBOT, and iFLYTEK are pursuing aggressive AI initiatives, from video production and workflow AI to robotics deployments and voice-recognition tech.

The article is part of a three-part series on China’s AI transformation, starting with physical AI such as robots and self-driving cars, then generative AI and voice tech, and finally industrial-tourism and robot-operated concepts as AI hubs emerge.

Baidu’s sixth-generation autonomous vehicle can travel up to 380 km per full charge and includes a swappable battery system that can be swapped in three minutes, with the seventh generation slated for launch by year-end or next year.

Baidu emphasizes value-for-money through China’s manufacturing ecosystem, localizing LiDAR sensors, and leveraging an ecosystem of suppliers, while claiming at least 5,900 related patents and using NVIDIA chipsets as it moves toward self-developed chips.

China’s AI rise is driven by major tech firms expanding into AI, with Beijing’s Zhongguancun housing over 2,500 AI companies across AI, robotics, autonomous driving and semiconductors.

Apollo Go has logged over 350 million autonomous driving kilometers, with more than 240 million kilometers driven without a driver, and holds a world record for distance in fully driverless tests.

Baidu began autonomous driving research in 2013, launched the Apollo platform in 2017, and has invested about 170 billion yuan (roughly $24 billion) into autonomous driving.