The Google of China is going to start testing self-driving cars in the US
Baidu
China's self-driving cars are coming to the US.
Baidu, a Beijing-based search company, plans to begin testing its self-driving cars in the US and currently has employees working on the project in its office in Sunnyvale, California, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
In an effort to help make driverless cars a reality on public roads, the company's chief scientist Andrew Ng, who heads up Baidu's office in Silicon Valley, is also calling on governments to make small changes to infrastructure.
In a recent article Ng wrote for Wired, he said roads today simply aren't equipped to support autonomous vehicles because they were built for human drivers, not robot cars. But with some simple changes, like adding more sensitive cameras to intersections or more traffic signals to complicated intersections, driverless cars could easily be supported on public roads, he said.
Baidu isn't the only company that wants the government's help in bringing self-driving cars to market.
On Tuesday, Chris Urmson, the director for Alphabet's self-driving cars project under Google X, called on the US government to create laws that would set regulations for driverless cars, allowing them to legally operate on all US roads.
Currently, rules governing self-driving cars are determined on a state-by-state basis.
"The leadership of the federal government is critically important given the growing patchwork of state laws and regulations on self-driving cars," Urmson said to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Technology on Tuesday.
Baidu is aiming to have a commercial model of its driverless vehicle ready in just two years. The company plans to introduce self-driving shuttles that will be capable of driving in a designated loop in China by 2018.
Many automakers and several tech companies are also developing self-driving cars in the US. Tesla, Ford, General Motors and more are all investing in the space, as well as Uber and reportedly Apple.