Self-driving cars and AI: the focus of Huawei

Huawei has teamed up with European, Japanese and Chinese vehicle companies to introduce self-driving cars as early as 2021. This demonstrates the firm’s focus on moving beyond its traditional telecommunications equipment offerings to embrace a wider range of artificial intelligence products.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Dang Wenshuan, Huawei’s chief strategy architect, advance that the firm is providing the AI backbone in several co-operative ventures. Some of these partnerships are with Audi, GAC Toyota Motor and the Chinese manufacturers Beijing New Energy Automobile and Changan Automobile. He said, “From my understanding, we are working together to have a car that will be shipped in the year 2021 or 2022 using these [autonomous driving] components”. He confirmed that the vehicles will be deployed in China and Europe. 

Despite the ban by the US, which will very likely impact on sectors such as cybersecurity and semiconductors, Huawei will keep working on the self-driving vehicle technology. A video was disclosed to the Financial Times which showed an Audi car driving around the streets of Shanghai in what seemed like an uncontrolled environment. The vehicle obeyed traffic signals and even avoided pedestrians and scooters. While someone was sitting behind the wheel in the clip, he did not touch the steering wheel or the controls

Huawei is working on AI tech for self-driving cars