China driverless cars in ‘3-5 years’

Beijing : Self-driving cars will hit the roads in China “within three to five years”, the founder of Chinese internet giant Baidu, one of the world’s leading designers of driverless cars, said Thursday.

That is a lot sooner than predicted by China’s information technology minister, who last week said it would only be reality in 8-10 years, citing constraints related to security.

“I’m more optimistic than him, I think it will come sooner,” Baidu CEO Robin Li said in Beijing on the sidelines of a consultative political assembly of which he is a member.

Baidu, often referred to as China’s Google, operates the country’s leading search engine and also invests heavily in services ranging from online payments to connected devices and artificial intelligence.