Tencent Silicon Valley recruits to build an autonomous driving R&D team

According to foreign media reports, Tencent recently began recruiting autonomous driving car engineers in Palo Alto, California, and began to form an autonomous driving R&D team in Silicon Valley.

Tencent's job posting on LinkedIn shows that "we are building a research and development group for our autonomous vehicle driving team in Palo Alto, California." Tencent has posted at least nine engineering job postings on LinkedIn, covering areas including motion planning, sensor fusion, vehicle intelligence and machine learning.

Silicon Valley is a testing and development hub for self-driving car technology, with more than 50 companies licensed to test self-driving cars on public roads in California.

Tencent declined to comment on its autonomous driving research and development plans in Silicon Valley.

Tencent Autonomous Driving made its debut as an independent brand at the Tencent Global Partner Conference held on November 1. Tencent has previously been approved to test autonomous vehicles on some public roads in Shenzhen.

Tencent's autonomous driving business center was officially established in September 2016, but there has been very little news in more than two years.

Su Kuifeng, head of Tencent's autonomous driving, said: "We actually started developing high-precision maps three years ago and started to build an autonomous driving team two years ago. So far, our team has more than 200 people."

An internal engineer of Tencent revealed that the entire autonomous driving laboratory currently includes six major departments: high-precision maps, fusion positioning, simulation platform, system and architecture, data platform, and core algorithms. Zhong Xiangping, president of Tencent Auto Connect, once emphasized that Auto Connect and autonomous driving are equally important businesses for Tencent.

Tencent started to make plans in the automotive field very early, for example, it invested in companies such as Weilai Automobile, Tesla and NavInfo. Tencent also established a joint venture with Changan Automobile to engage in car networking, big data analysis and other businesses.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.