Skip to main content

Baidu boss under investigation for travelling in self-driving car

The CEO of Chinese search engine and mapping service, Baidu, is reportedly under police investigation following reports that he took one of the company’s self-driving cars to a technology conference.
July 7, 2017 Read time: 1 min

The CEO of Chinese search engine and mapping service, Baidu, is reportedly under police investigation following reports that he took one of the company’s self-driving cars to a technology conference.

Robin Li was in the passenger seat when made a video call to the conference in Beijing. A company employee was allegedly in the driver’s seat with his hands off the wheel. The city’s current traffic regulations do not allow self-driving cars on public roads.

Baidu is currently developing a self-driving car and announced at the conference that it had formed an alliance with 50 partners, including five Chinese automakers, TomTom and Ford to develop the cars.

Related Content

  • Samsung to test self-driving cars in South Korea
    May 2, 2017
    South Korea's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has approved testing of Samsung’s self-driving car on the country’s roads, according to the YonHap news agency. Samsung's self-driving car is a Hyundai vehicle equipped with cameras and sensors. Samsung plans to develop top-of-the-line sensors and computer modules backed by artificial intelligence and deep-learning technologies to improve cars' self-driving capabilities even in challenging weather conditions. In November 2016, the company bought U
  • Google in talks with world car makers on autonomous cars
    January 15, 2015
    Google has begun discussions with most of the world's top automakers and has assembled a team of traditional and non-traditional suppliers to speed up efforts to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020, a top Google executive has said. Those manufacturers are said to include General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota, Daimler and Volkswagen. "We'd be remiss not to talk to ... the biggest auto manufacturers. They've got a lot to offer," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, said in an
  • California grants Uber driverless car permit, releases autonomous vehicle regulations
    March 13, 2017
    The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has issued Uber with another permit to put its driverless cars back on the state’s roads, according to Reuters. Obtaining the permit also marks a concession for Uber, which had fought California regulators over the requirement and initially refused to apply for the US$150 permit. Following a disagreement with regulators last December when Uber argued that its cars do not meet the state's definition of an autonomous vehicle because they require constant mo
  • The move towards shared telematics platforms
    February 27, 2013
    Is the end for dedicated, in-vehicle telematics systems now in sight? Some seemed to think so at the recent Telematics Munich 2012 conference… Geoff Hadwick reports. Forget smartphone apps – leave that sort of thing to Apple and Google,” Roger Lanctot, associate director of the global automotive practice at consultancy Strategy Analytics told more than 700 delegates in Munich last month at the Telematics Munich 2012 conference. They are a waste of time and money, he said. Forget putting too much data on das