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Jack Ma, Alibaba's founder and chairman, tries the company's
internet-connected car during a launch event in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province,
July 6, 2016. China Daily/via
REUTERS |
Chinese tech firm Alibaba's internet-connected car will set
the Chinese e-commerce giant up to quickly introduce driverless vehicle
technology, Chief Technology Officer Wang Jian told Reuters on Wednesday.
Alibaba and the country's largest automaker SAIC Motor Corp
demonstrated their jointly developed car equipped with the YunOS operating
system, which can link up with smart phones, at an event in eastern China's
Hangzhou on Wednesday. The car is slated to go on sale later this year.
"You'll quickly see driverless car technology resulting
from this platform," Wang said on the sidelines of the event.
Among major tech companies, Alibaba is relatively late to
offer a platform that can link a smart phone to a car, trailing platforms
already launched by Alphabet's Google, Apple and Baidu.
But the race to commercialize driverless cars is far from
over with experts predicting that a fully autonomous car will not hit the
market until 2020 or later.
-Reuters
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