China may be the future for Mercedes-Benz • The Register
Autonomous driving research in China is receiving a strengthen from Mercedes-Benz and Tencent, who on Monday introduced a partnership that will involve building of a joint autonomous driving investigate lab.
In a statement unveiled on WeChat, Tencent introduced the pair would be exploring autonomous driving toolchains, verification providers and other autonomous vehicle tech. Tencent stated it has a “wealthy expertise and source accumulation in autonomous driving,” and that it will also assist Mercedes-Benz through cloud computing, massive info, AI and basic safety technological know-how.
In accordance to Dr Hans Georg Engel, senior EVP at Daimler Larger China Financial investment Co, Mercedes-Benz has currently been “intensively acquiring and testing latest and upcoming-era autonomous driving techniques” in China.
In its WeChat article, Tencent quoted Engel as declaring that Daimler’s long run achievements in China depends on “in-depth insight into local elaborate targeted traffic ailments and market needs.” That language carefully echoes the phrasing employed by BMW Group when it introduced a partnership with Tencent in 2019.
“The BMW Group will use [Tencent’s] platform to build automated driving technologies and goods which accommodate the elaborate neighborhood visitors problems and satisfy community shopper calls for,” BMW claimed at the time.
It is no shock that Tencent’s partnership bulletins with Western automakers require comparable language: it really is been making an attempt for a though to grow to be the go-to enterprise for international automakers on the lookout to enter China’s substantial electrical car current market, CNBC described in late June.
Of distinct interest to CNBC was Tencent’s Clever Car Cloud (TIAC), which the business announced past month. Features involved in TIAC include information storage that optimizes autonomous drive procedure instruction, social media interfaces and “all technological areas of an electrical vehicle,” CNBC described.
Mercedes-Benz’s partnership with Tencent just isn’t new, either. The two have been performing alongside one another due to the fact 2015, when the German business became the very first luxury carmaker to lover on Tencent’s in-car My Car or truck services.
The pair also partnered final 12 months to strengthen Mercedes-Benz car safety just after Tencent safety researchers managed to exploit some vulnerabilities in the onboard MBUX infotainment technique.
Outside of its partnership with Tencent, Mercedes-Benz launched its personal study and improvement heart in China in 2021, with Daimler Car Group Board of Management member Markus Schäfer indicating at the time that China was central to the automaker’s options.
“When it will come to digitization, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, chopping-edge computing, our R&D crew in China performs an ever more essential role for us. This goes for technologies growth, but also for technological know-how sourcing, in particular with regard to New Vitality Automobiles (NEVs),” Schäfer stated.
Mercedes-Benz and Tencent’s unique ideas stay unfamiliar, but Engel did offer a clue for the curious. “Mercedes-Benz is the initial car corporation in the entire world to fulfill the rigid legal demands for Stage 3 conditional autonomous driving devices,” Engel mentioned.
Mercedes-Benz previously partnered with Bosch to function on Stage 4 and 5 of autonomous driving, which it claimed it wanted to accomplish within the future 10 years. The automaker has also fully commited to going absolutely electric by 2030, and China recorded 50 percent the world’s EV gross sales in 2021. No question Mercedes-Benz is wanting to the East for its foreseeable future. ®
