BIDU Stock Price Prediction

Summary:

China’s search engine and digital advertising giant, Baidu (BIDU) is confident that it will be able to deliver mass-market self-driving cars by 2021. Alphabet (GOOG), the global leader in search and digital advertising also wants to bring commercial autonomous cars by 2020. In my view, I think Baidu will roll out its consumer self-driving car before Alphabet does.

I say this because Baidu has formidable partners in Intel (INTC) and Ford (F). Baidu and Intel are already evaluating and developing compute and data center solutions to make self-driving cars safer. What this means is that Baidu won’t have to spend too much on research and development to make its self-driving car. Intel will do the heavy lifting (and resource spending) to create safer self-driving vehicles under the Baidu brand.

Getting government approval for self-driving cars require Intel and Baidu to meet strict safety standards. Baidu is now using China-made $9,000 Chery EQ electric car for its prototype autonomous car testing.

(Source: Engadget)

Time is also of the essence. Baidu is not the only Chinese firm with ambitious plans for consumer autonomous vehicles. LeEco (formerly LeTV), China’s biggest online streaming video service provider, is also allocating $3 billion to build a self-driving car factory in Zhejiang, China. Baidu has the money to match LeEco’s spending power. However, it still needs Intel’s expertise in computing, data center infrastructure, sensors, and Artificial Intelligence.