Chongqing Changan Automobile Co recently promised to provide 81 cars to Baidu for more accurate information collection.

The cars will collect data on bad road conditions even in deserts, plateaus and the far north over an area of 6.5 million kilometers.

Baidu intends to raise its data gathering ability by cooperating with the company, and the firm in turn hopes to use Baidu’s map and voice technology to assist drivers in traffic navigation, car condition inquiries and communications. Changan automobiles, including the best-selling EADO and RAETON, have been equipped with Baidu’s Internet applications including CarLife, MyCar and CoDriver.

The company owns 5,635 technical patents, has won 110 science and technology innovation prizes and leads in over 60 intelligent technologies related to driving.

It will go on to cooperate with Baidu in high-edged technology research and development such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and L3 unmanned driving technologies.

Li Dongmin, general manager of Baidu Maps, said that more efforts will be made to build the maps into artificial intelligent platforms based on big data gathered by the Changan autos.

Liangjiang New Area is China’s biggest auto manufacturing base. Last year its production volume reached 2.13 million units, 8.6 percent of China’s total figure.

Changan auto samples ready to fulfill their mission. [Photo/Liangjiang.gov.cn]