Huawei set to enter the race to launch self-driving cars

Chinese tech giant Huawei could be about to enter the race towards an autonomous driving future.

According to the Financial Times (FT), the firm is teaming up with various European and Chinese manufacturers in a bid to launch self-driving vehicles as early as 2021. Audi, Beijing New Energy Automobile, Changan Automobile and the GAC Group are all said to be using artificial intelligence (AI) framework provided by Huawei.

Speaking to FT, Dang Wenshuan, Huawei’s chief strategy architect, said: “From my understanding, we are working together to have a car that will be shipped in the year 2021 or 2022 using these [autonomous] components. This will be in China but not only in China, it will also be in Europe.”

The report from FT claims a video was shown at Huawei’s HQ, in which an Audi could be seen autonomously driving around Shanghai streets in what is said to look like an uncontrolled environment.

Huawei will be up against stiff competition from the likes of Google and Uber in the race to develop self-driving technologies though. The former has been exploring the technology for a while through its Waymo sub-brand, while the latter yesterday announced that it had prepared a production-ready autonomous version of the XC90 SUV with Volvo.