Audi In Chinese Smart Car Push

The luxury car unit of Volkswagen, Audi, has agreed to boost its in-place efforts with a series of China-based technology groups in an effort to bring more digital capability to the world’s biggest auto market, said Reuters.

Audi and FAW-Volkswagon have signed letters of intent with Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, with no financial terms disclosed, the newswire noted. The agreement in place with Baidu and Audi looks to bring smartphone apps to cars. Volkswagen (the parent company) remains “hobbled” by the continued controversies over falsified emissions tests.

In other initiatives, VW and Audi have linked with social network Tencent to foster new use of the WeChat communication app, while the Alibaba partnership seeks to expand the use of real-time data, tied to traffic alerts, for example.