Chinese search engine giant Baidu is planning to produce driverless cars by 2020, its chief executive said, as the company reported revenue climbed sharply in the first quarter.
Income for the three months ending in March reached USD 2.45 billion (15.82 billion yuan), up 31.2 per cent from the same period a year earlier, according to a statement released Thursday, as ads flowed into its search engine.
"We had a terrific start to 2016," Baidu chief executive Robin Li said during a conference call. "This quarter we made notable progress in executing our mission in connecting users with information and services."
But net profit slid 18.9 percent year-on-year to USD 308.1 million for the quarter, the statement said, as the firm seeks to diversify its business beyond online search.
Baidu, often referred to as China's version of Google, is investing heavily in services ranging from online payments to online-to-offline transactions, such as food delivery.
Like Google, the Chinese company is spending on research and development to put a driverless car on the road.
"We believe that the automobile is the next major computing platform," Li told analysts during the call.
"We're on track now to deploy autonomous vehicles powered by Baidu technology in 2018 with production at scale by 2020."
Baidu shares rose more than four percent to $194.99 in after-market trades on the Nasdaq exchange following release of the earnings figures.
"We are pleased to deliver very strong results for the first quarter, and our integrated online marketing and transaction services platform continued to exhibit strength and momentum," Baidu chief financial officer Jennifer Li said in the statement.
Baidu reported having 663 million monthly active users for March, a nine percent increase from the same month last year.
The company expects revenue in the second quarter to range from USD 3.12 billion to USD 3.19 billion in what could be an increase of more than 28 per cent from the previous year.
The transfer of an item as advanced and significant
as a TEL, even if only transferred as a truck chassis known to be capable of modification to a TEL, would require the approval from the highest levels of China's government if not also the People's Liberation Army, they noted.
"Such cooperation between the governments of Pakistan and China would represent a threat to the national security of the United States and its allies," Rogers and Poe said and asked a set of six questions to the Obama Administration.
"Is there any evidence that China or Chinese entities have supplied TELs, or trucks capable of being modified to TELs, for a Pakistani medium-range nuclear ballistic missile? If so, how many? And when did the Administration learn of the possibility that such TELs would be transferred to Pakistan? And of the transfer(s)?" they asked.
"What, if anything, has the Administration done to ensure China halts such cooperation and demands the return of these TELs?What entities in Pakistan and in China were conduits for the transfer of funding involved in this transfer?" the lawmakers asked.
