Tencent and Mercedes-Benz Cooperate on Autonomous Driving
Daimler Greater China Ltd., a subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz Group, signed a memorandum of cooperation with Tencent Cloud Computing Beijing Ltd. in the field of high-level autonomous driving. Under the agreement, cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence technologies will be used to speed up the simulation, testing and application of Mercedes-Benz’s autonomous driving technology.
This cooperation will strengthen R&D resources and support Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia to jointly develop self-driving car technology in China. To this end, a joint laboratory for autonomous driving will be established to speed up the research and development of Mercedes-Benz in this field and better serve the Chinese market.
“We are delighted to be working with local partners like Tencent,” said Dr. Hans Georg Engel, Senior Executive Vice President of Mercedes-Benz China. “Mercedes-Benz is the first automobile enterprise in the world to meet the strict legal requirements of L3 automated driving system. In China, we are intensively developing and testing the current and next generation automated driving systems. To succeed in this field, in-depth insight into local complex traffic and market demand is very important.”
Through this cooperation between Mercedes-Benz and Tencent, the latter will provide integrated, high-performance and stable cloud service support for Mercedes-Benz through IT architecture, tools and platforms with rich experience in autonomous driving, cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence. At the same time, Tencent will provide its expertise in the field of car networking security to support Mercedes-Benz’s R&D of automated driving in China.
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Tencent and Mercedes-Benz have completed many years of cooperation. In 2015, Mercedes-Benz became the first luxury car manufacturer to cooperate with Tencent to launch “MyCar,” an innovative service to meet the needs of Chinese customers. In the future, the two sides say they are also willing to explore the possibility of cooperation in more fields.
In addition, Cailian Press learned from individuals familiar with the matter that Tencent‘s in-car navigation product, “Smart Driving Map,” which was released at the end of last year, is still undergoing normal progress and is expected to be mass-produced in the second half of this year. The product was originally scheduled to be launched with new cars in batches during the second quarter, but the production of the car companies themselves was affected by the resurgent pandemic at that time.
