Germany’s Bosch MOU with Tencent

Global companies are entering China’s self-driving market one after another.

This is because the Chinese market is larger than other regions and the technology growth rate is fast.

According to foreign media on the 2nd, German auto parts maker Bosch recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with China’s largest information technology (IT) company, Tencent, to establish a cooperative system in various fields for autonomous driving services, including cloud computing.

In particular, the contract was made as Tencent aggressively operates its artificial intelligence (AI) service “Hunyuan” to local electric vehicle manufacturers in China that develop next-generation smart cars. Tencent has already signed partnerships with global automakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Toyota as well as Bosch.

Prior to this, Bosch made a strategic investment in ‘Black Sesame’, a Chinese autonomous AI semiconductor development company, last year. Black Sesame is developing object recognition algorithms and object image processing technology necessary for autonomous driving and designing semiconductors for vehicles equipped with AI systems. In fact, it highly appreciates Black Sesame’s technology and market potential.

Tesla, a U.S. electric vehicle company, has signed a partnership with Baidu, China’s largest portal site, to distribute fully autonomous driving technology. As a result, Tesla is expected to receive access to Baidu’s mapping license. In order to apply autonomous driving systems on public roads in China, a license for mapping must be obtained. In the case of foreign companies, they must form a partnership with a local Chinese company that has acquired the license.

In this regard, an official from the domestic automobile industry said, “U.S. self-driving technology cannot enter China due to the Chinese government’s regulations,” adding, “If we want to target the Chinese self-driving market, we have no choice but to solve it ourselves.” “China’s self-driving technology is ahead of Korea,” he added. “This is why global companies are establishing a cooperative system with local Chinese companies.”

Recently, there have also been cases in which Chinese autonomous driving technology is exported. In August, Chinese robot taxi company ‘Pony Dot AE’ signed an MOU with Singapore taxi operating company Compute Delgro and decided to jointly promote the commercial operation of self-driving taxis.

Computdelgro has more than 34,000 vehicles worldwide, providing a variety of land transport services, including rail transportation and car rentals, as well as buses and taxis. It is being serviced in Singapore, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia. Wiride, another robot taxi company in China, earlier started operating autonomous minibuses in Singapore.