Tell-tale white and blue self-driving cars belonging to Baidu, China’s largest search engine, have been spotted on public roads in northern Beijing, in what appear to be the first public road tests of fully autonomous cars in China.
China’s government has announced it will develop national regulations for testing on public roads in China, which a Baidu executive said could be ready by the end of the year. But already the company appears to be testing fully autonomous cars in what is a legal grey area — the cars have drivers in them but they appear not to be driving. A Baidu representative declined to comment.
A senior executive at Baidu confirmed it was working with local governments to start legally testing autonomously-driven cars on some public roads in China by February 2018, which would be a milestone for the industry.