Ma joins global race for driverless cars

E-COMMERCE giant Alibaba is steering resources toward driverless car technology, its CEO Jack Ma confirmed yesterday, joining a global race to shape the future of driving.

Despite fresh safety fears after a woman was hit and killed by a self-driving Uber vehicle in the US last month, many tech giants like Google as well as automakers are accelerating plans in an industry attracting billions of dollars.

The competition is heating up in China, the world’s largest car market, with Internet firm and Alibaba rival Baidu recently predicting that selfdriving vehicles will hit the road in the country within three to five years.

Both Baidu and Tencent are pursuing the technology, stirring speculation about Alibaba’s plans.

“We’ve been doing a lot of research on driverless things,” Ma said yesterday while on a business trip to Bangkok.

“What we want to do is (figure out) how we can make the cars more automatic, more friendly, more like a partner of human beings rather than just a driving tool,” he said.

“I believe our children will only work four hours a day and four days a week or maybe three days a week, but they still will tell us they are very busy. Why are they busy? They are in cars,” he added.

Ma did not elaborate on the company’s plans but said the purpose was not to commercially compete with rivals Tencent and Baidu.

Chinese authorities approved rules this month to allow for local driverless road tests, said state-backed media, which reported on Wednesday that Alibaba was adding staff to work on the technology.