BlackBerry agrees to work with Baidu for self-driving cars

Internet search company Baidu Inc confirmed to the Global Times on Thursday that it has signed a deal to develop self-driving vehicle technology with Blackberry.

The deal sent BlackBerry’s Torontolisted shares up 13 percent to a four-year high on Wednesday.

The deal follows similar agreements with companies such as Qualcomm Inc, Denso and Aptiv Plc to develop self-driving technology with BlackBerry’s QNX software, which are expected to start generating revenue in 2019.

Investors and analysts are closely watching what comes of those agreements amid expectations that QNX could become a key technology in the autonomous driving industry, serving as the operating system for computer chips used to run the vehicles.

QNX will be the operating system for Apollo, a platform for self-driving vehicles that Baidu announced in April and has billed as the “Android” of the autonomous driving industry.

Apollo has since signed up several major automakers, including Ford Motor Co, Hyundai Motor Group and several Chinese carmakers.

QNX has long been used to run car infotainment consoles.

BlackBerry has recently developed the software to run sophisticated computer chips for autos that manage multiple safety-critical systems.

The two companies said they will also integrate Baidu’s CarLife, a smartphone integration software for connected cars in China, its conversational artificial intelligence system and highdefinition maps with BlackBerry’s infotainment platform.

Baidu is set to unveil its autonomous driving system Apollo 2.0 at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 in Las Vegas, US, next week.

Apollo provides a comprehensive and reliable all-in-one solution. Apollo 2.0, which is the latest version of the system, will enable cars to drive autonomously on simple urban roads, the company told the Global Times in an interview in December 2017.