This week, the CEO of China’s biggest search engine took one of the company’s self-driving cars to a technology conference, all while live-streaming the experience to the people in attendance. Now he’s reportedly under investigation by the local police, because self-driving cars aren’t yet allowed on the public roads he was traveling on.
Video pulled from the live stream of the conference shows Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, riding in the passenger seat of a modified Jeep Cherokee on Beijing’s 5th Ring Road. Another person, presumably a Baidu employee, is sitting in the driver’s seat with his hands off the wheel. Li spends about a minute speaking with a presenter onstage at the conference as the SUV drifts between lanes.
Our CEO Robin Li arrived in style for his keynote in a self-driving car! #BaiduCreate pic.twitter.com/JmeJ6bh2zO
— Baidu Inc. (@Baidu_Inc) July 5, 2017
It was a brief, unspectacular demonstration of Baidu’s progress toward its own goal of creating a fully autonomous car by 2019 and mass production by 2021. Baidu also announced a new self-driving technology platform at the conference built on partnerships with major automakers and technology companies.
The problem is the Chinese government banned the testing of self-driving cars on public roads in 2016 as it figures out how to approach the new technology. With that in mind, Li’s demo is like if Sundar Pichai rode one of Waymo’s self-driving cars to Google I/O, but purposely plotted a course through the states that don’t allow them yet. Or, for a more real parallel, it echoes former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s decision to release self-driving SUVs onto the roads of San Francisco without the proper permits.