BEIJING/SHANGHAI: China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which owns Volvo Cars and holds 9.7% of Daimler, said on Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Tencent Holdings Ltd to develop smart vehicle cockpit and autonomous driving.
In the latest such partnership in the fast-evolving sector, the companies will jointly develop smart car cockpits to have more mobile and mobility service applications, and explore testing of autonomous driving, Geely said in a statement.
The deal with Tencent, which has investments in electric vehicle (EV) makers including Tesla and Nio, is developing smart car technologies, is the third recent partnership by Hangzhou-based Geely with companies involved in the tech sector.
Geely said this month it would launch a smart EV company with Baidu Inc and later that it would form a separate venture with Foxconn to provide contract manufacturing for automakers.
Meanwhile, in the US, General Motors (GM) announced it is joining forces with Microsoft on its Cruise autonomous driving venture, with the tech giant coming on board as an investor and technology partner as it pushes to commercialise self-driving technology.
The companies have established "a long-term strategic relationship," and Microsoft will join GM, Honda and institutional investors in a new US$2 billion (RM8.1 billion) equity investment round, GM and Cruise said in a press release.
The tech giant also will provide hardware and software engineering support.
The plan includes the use of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing capacity to commercialise Cruise technology.
"Our mission to bring safer, better, and more affordable transportation to everyone isn't just a tech race – it's also a trust race," Cruise chief executive Dan Ammann said.
"Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratisation of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialise our fleet of self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles."
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said the venture will help GM and Cruise to "scale and make autonomous transportation mainstream."
The partnership comes on the heels of a series of GM announcements to reposition the Detroit giant to compete with Tesla and other newer players.
Last week, GM announced plans to build a fleet of new electric vans, and earlier this month, the company unveiled its first new corporate logo in decades in an effort to shift its image towards what it calls a world of "zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion." – Reuters, AFP
