Baidu's autonomous driving solution on display at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen on Tuesday Photo: Li Qiaoyi/GT

Baidu has completed registration of its electric vehicle venture which it set up with the help of Chinese automaker Geely, marking another important step in the Chinese search engine giant's march into the nascent and opportunity-rich new-energy vehicle (NEV) market. 

According to public information on China's corporate information website qcc.com, the company Jidu Auto was registered on Tuesday with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan ($309 million). Xia Yiping, Jidu's CEO, is the company's legal representative.

The business scope of the company Jidu Auto includes NEV whole cars and auto components manufacturing, auto technology services and car sales, the qcc.com data showed. It is located in Jiading district in Shanghai. 

An industry source told the Global Times that Jidu has five directors of board. Apart from Xia, three are from Baidu and one from Geely. 

The registration took place only weeks after Baidu announced to make NEVs along with Geely, a move which aroused curiosity and anticipation among Chinese observers that Baidu's NEV cars will compete with Elon Musk's Tesla, which has enjoyed great success in China, as well as other domestic NEV brands in China. 

Baidu CEO Robin Li Yanhong disclosed recently that the Baidu has hired a management team with strong auto-making background. It will take about three years for Baidu to launch an electric car model, he said. 

Baidu established its autonomous driving unit Apollo in 2017, which mainly supplies self-driving technology powered by artificial intelligence. 

Global Times