This coincides with Kia/Hyundai announcing the same thing. Either they need Baidu tech to compete with BYD in the Chinese market because it’s just that good or locally desirable. Or the countries regulators require it. Given they all announced this at the auto show at the same time, seems too coordinated for competing car companies.
I got curious. It’s at least partially the government regulation thing. They’ve been working on standards that get inforced soon around data privacy and updates to software. So they can roll their own Chinese version of the software with in-country servers, privacy compliance, surveillance compliance, etc. or pay Baidu/Tencent.
I believe its about the map and coordinate system used by China. They uses an encrypted (?) coordinate system claiming national security. That’s why Google maps never work in China.
I do not think that is the case. OpenStreetMaps exist for mainland, and a lot of phones have BeiDou satnav system instead of just western GPS.
Google refused to comply with Chinese laws to respect the country, and exited mainland. Few other companies got banned because they disrespected and disregarded the laws. If Chinese companies did this in USA, they would be labelled terrorist organisation entities.
This coincides with Kia/Hyundai announcing the same thing. Either they need Baidu tech to compete with BYD in the Chinese market because it’s just that good or locally desirable. Or the countries regulators require it. Given they all announced this at the auto show at the same time, seems too coordinated for competing car companies.
I got curious. It’s at least partially the government regulation thing. They’ve been working on standards that get inforced soon around data privacy and updates to software. So they can roll their own Chinese version of the software with in-country servers, privacy compliance, surveillance compliance, etc. or pay Baidu/Tencent.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/chines-mandatory-standards-vehicle-cybersecurity-icv-data-振强-焦-qupec
I believe its about the map and coordinate system used by China. They uses an encrypted (?) coordinate system claiming national security. That’s why Google maps never work in China.
I do not think that is the case. OpenStreetMaps exist for mainland, and a lot of phones have BeiDou satnav system instead of just western GPS.
Google refused to comply with Chinese laws to respect the country, and exited mainland. Few other companies got banned because they disrespected and disregarded the laws. If Chinese companies did this in USA, they would be labelled terrorist organisation entities.