The luxury carmaker and Chinese online giant have already started trials in Beijing and Shanghai
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A very smart car Image: Baidu, China’s largest search engine, and BMW, one of the most popular German marques in China, are working together to put driverless cars on the road in a bid that could take on Google’s efforts in the West.
BMW has already performed thousands of kilometres of testing on German autobahns and is now looking to bring the technology to the Middle Kingdom.
However, China’s complex, fast-expanding urban centers are proving challenging compared to testing on endlessly straight highways.
The German carmaker needs a Chinese partner to provide the highly detailed maps required for route planning. Topographical details will even need to include curb placement and turn angles. Baidu offers China’s largest and most detailed set of maps and cloud services.
China’s sheer scale also provides logistical problems for autonomous vehicles that, as yet, have insufficient memory to store detailed maps of an entire country.