Internet tech to power the auto industry’s future

The combination of internet technology and the traditional automotive industry will become a major trend in the future, an industrial leader said during the two sessions.

“Electrification, intelligent connected vehicles, the sharing economy and internationalization will be trends for the automotive industry,” Chen Hong, chairman of Shanghai-based SAIC Motor Corp Ltd and also a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), said Monday.

Last week, the company obtained the country’s first license for an unmanned vehicle road test.

“Last year SAIC Motor sold 6.93 million vehicles, taking up over 23 percent of the market share,”he said.“The group’s revenue has reached 840 billion yuan（$132 billion) .”

“In the future we will combine big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing into the automotive industry and push industrial upgrading forward,” he said.

SAIC Motor developed the first intelligent connected vehicles with Alibaba in 2016, and has sold 500,000 units in the 18 months since the models were released.