Alibaba set to introduce driverless vehicle technology with internet-connected cars

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 smartphones, 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 smartphone to a car, trailing platforms already launched by Alphabet's Google, Apple and Baidu. But the race to commercialize driverless cars is far from over with experts predicting that a fully autonomous car will not hit the market until 2020 or later.This development comes right after Alibaba went public with a new drive to display its determination to stamp out fake goods, urging brands to help its anti-piracy campaign rather than trade rebukes on the issue. The U.S.-listed online shopping powerhouse has been dogged by accusations its sites are flooded with copy-cat products, culminating with its ejection this year from a U.S.-based anti-counterfeiting alliance only weeks after being admitted.Reuters