Former Baidu Vice President Joins Autonomous Driving Startup Pegasus

The autonomous driving start-up Pegasus said on Wednesday that Wang Jingao had officially joined Pegasus as co-founder and CTO. In his new role, Wang will be focusing on advanced technological innovations for the company in addition to heading up the research and development team. Previously, he was vice president of Baidu and the research and development manager at Baidu Apollo.

Wang Jingao was one of the founders of Baidu open platform for autonomous driving. He also served as the director of Baidu‘s mobile search, which has more than 60 Chinese and American patents. He was responsible for the overall research and development, planning and operation of Baidu Apollo, and led the development and iteration of all versions of the Apollo platform from 1.0 to 7.0. Before joining Baidu, he worked for Google and was a founding team member of Android 1.0. He led the research and development team to realize the first wireless 3G function in Android history and jointly released the world’s first Android smartphone.

Pegasus was founded in November 2021 and has already completed several rounds of angel investing financing raise hundreds of millions within its short existence. The research and development of the company consists of autonomous driving and artificial intelligence talent from Tesla, Cruise, Magna, NVIDIA, Apple and other companies. They have experience in several fields, including automated driving, cooperative vehicle infrastructure system, big data, among others. From its current lineup of team members, the company has accumulated technology and industry insights and is looking to develop a variety of autonomous driving products.

The company is committed to building China’s most advanced and universal L4 autonomous driving platform. The company’s aim is to develop a platform for vehicles, transportation and cloud services, focusing on the two major fields of large-scale logistics and extended duration trips. It also will provide cross-platform integrated solutions in the three major application scenarios of trunk logistics, urban freight transportation and passenger travel.

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Wang Jingao has confidence in the future of the company. He commented on its viability, “Autonomous driving is a strategic highland of global science and technology competition. The industry offers to combine and innovate in the fields of artificial intelligence, the Internet, as well as the automobile and transportation industry. My reason for joining Pegasus is to use my accumulated experience in technology and industry to work with a strong research and development team to achieve innovation and breakthrough in the technology of tomorrow. Together we will strive to create a safer, more efficient and greener intelligent logistics and travel experience.”