China's Alibaba puts internet in cars, plans to take drivers out

Hangzhou/Beijing: Chinese tech firm Alibaba`s internet-connected car will set the Chinese e-commerce giant up to quickly introduce driverless vehicle technology, Chief Technology Officer Wang Jian told Reuters on Wednesday.

Alibaba and the country`s largest automaker SAIC Motor Corp demonstrated their jointly developed car equipped with the YunOS operating system, which can link up with smart phones, at an event in eastern China`s Hangzhou on Wednesday. The car is slated to go on sale later this year.

"You`ll quickly see driverless car technology resulting from this platform," Wang said on the sidelines of the event.

Among major tech companies, Alibaba is relatively late to offer a platform that can link a smart phone to a car, trailing platforms already launched by Alphabet`s Google, Apple and Baidu.

But the race to commercialise driverless cars is far from over with experts predicting that a fully autonomous car will not hit the market until 2020 or later.