China-based internet company Baidu announced a RMB10bn ($1.5bn) vehicle called Apollo Fund yesterday aimed at the autonomous driving sector.
The fund is set to back 100 self-driving car projects over the next three years. It will seek opportunities across the globe in the areas of software, hardware, vertical services and data providers.
The vehicle draws its name from Baidu’s open-source autonomous driving platform Apollo, which has attracted 70 industry partners so far, including car manufacturers such as Hyundai. Baidu announced the latest iteration of the platform, Apollo 1.5, in conjunction with the Apollo Fund.
Portfolio startups will gain access to the Apollo platform and to the ecosystem of partners.
The Apollo platform enables features such as high-definition maps, day and night obstacle detection and end-to-end deep learning. The platform also offers large-scale cloud computing that exploits real-time traffic data aggregating approximately one million kilometres per day.
The platform currently powers self-driving cars in restricted environments but is expected to allow for simple urban road conditions by the end of the year. By the end of 2020, Baidu expects Apollo will power self-driving cars on motorways and open city roads.