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If you’re accustomed to shopping on eBay or Amazon then you probably heard of Alibaba at least once. The Chinese company is possibly the biggest seller of goods online in the eastern part of Asia and it’s also one of the most profitable, showing a market value of $231 billion last September. What does this have to do with cars, though?
Well, it seems like the company wants to expand to new segments and car making somehow seemed approachable. According to German publication KFZ, Alibaba teamed up with Chinese car maker SAIC and are trying to come up with a sort of connected car by the end of 2016.
In this endeavor, both companies have set up separated development funds and are looking at a means to make the most of the deal. The end product would be capable of communicating to other cars on the road (presumably fitted with the same kind of technology) via cloud storage.
Internet connectivity for cars has been around for quite some time now and it wouldn’t be something new. However, the announcement comes as a response to a recent report from Baidu (China’s own version of Google) that claims the IT company is looking to also create a self-driving car, somewhat like their American counterparts.
