Shanghai (ZXZC)- Baidu Inc and Great Wall Motor signed a strategic memorandum of cooperation on April 9 to extend collaboration in four major areas, intelligent-connected vehicle (ICV), autonomous driving, travelling sharing and big data. Both parties will make use of their advantageous resources to jointly promote relevant technical R&D and applications in ICV and autonomous driving fields.

Actually, it is not the first-time cooperation between Great Wall Motor and Baidu. As early as 2016, the automaker and the China's Internet giant had joined hands to co-develop high-definition map (HD map) positioning technology and has made some industry-leading technology achievements. 

According to the memorandum, Great Wall Motor will build an ICV demonstration zone in Xushui District, Baoding (the city where Great Wall Motor headquarters in). The Internet company will help the automaker and Baoding government formulate laws and regulations on public road tests for autonomous vehicles.

Besides, Great Wall Motor and Baidu will jointly build an open application platform that integrates software and hardware of automotive-grade autonomous driving systems to achieve the connection between Great Wall Motor's self-driving system i-Pilot and Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving platform. 

Additionally, two participants will explore revolutionary approaches in future travelling area and provide users with safe, convenient and efficient travelling experience based on Great Wall Motor's electric vehicle platform.

What's more, two companies will establish a big data platform with functions of data collection, storage and analysis to build an all-new natural language interaction in-vehicle system. 

Reportedly, the sample vehicle equipped with i-Pilot 1.0 self-driving system has been tested on roads for over 500 thousand kilometers. Moreover, Great Wall Motor plans to install the i-Pilot 1.0 system in WEY-branded vehicles in 2020 to realize the L3 autonomous driving operation (according to SAE autonomous driving classification standards).