Baidu will have a self-driving vehicle ready to sell in three years

When are self-driving cars coming? China has an answer, sort of. Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng told a reporter from the Chinese media outlet PingWest that having a self-driving vehicle ready for sale in three years would be no problem.

That doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily be able to buy one, though. Ng says Baidu is going to start with public transportation buses, and it’s not clear whether they’ll have a self-driving sedan in three years capable of handling China’s high-speed highways.

Moreover, developing the product and getting government approval for the product are two very different things. There’s good news on that front too: reports suggest that Baidu has made an agreement with the Beijing town of Yizhuang, which it may well use as a testing ground for self-driving public buses. But China’s government tends to be cautious when it comes to the rollout of new technologies, so there could still be a sizeable gap between when self-driving vehicles are ready for the commercial market and when they’re actually in use across the country.

Baidu isn’t the only company pursuing self-driving cars, of course, but it seems to be the only major Chinese company that’s likely to have a commercially viable product in the near future. And given two of the other big autonomous vehicle researchers (Google and Tesla) lack a strong foothold in China (Google left the China market years ago; Tesla operates there but sales have been lackluster), the company looks like the clear front-runner in China’s race towards the self-driving future we’re all waiting for.