Huawei driverless car tech ready by 2025

Huawei Technologies is diversifying from telecommunications into autonomous vehicles and aims to launch its new driverless tech by 2025.

The Chinese telco giant's move follows internet search engine Baidu's recent decision to branch out into driverless cars.

"Our team's goal is to reach true driverless passenger cars in 2025," said Wang Jun, senior executive at Huawei's new driverless tech division.

Back in April, Huawei announced it was investing $US1 billion ($A1.3bn) in a new research program into electric cars and autonomous tech but gave no timeline when we would see either introduced.

Helping it leapfrog Apple's Project Titan, Huawei said it has teamed up with the BAIC Group, Chongqing Changan Automobile and Guangzhou Auto, all of which have pure-electric cars either on sale or in development and are well underway in developing driverless tech.

Fast-growing Huawei is one of China's first truly global multinational companies, with the Shenzhen-based telco making more smartphones, base stations and routers than any other company.

In recent years it has also become dogged in controversy in the US and Australia, where it was accused of using its tech to engage in covert surveillance on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

It's believed that with the switch to autonomous vehicles, Huawei will begin to recover revenue lost from its smartphone business that was hit hard by US sanctions.

It's rumoured that in 2025 Huawei will not only launch its new autonomous tech, but sell rebadged versions of cars produced by one of its partners.

There's no official confirmation on how long Huawei's autonomous arm has been operating, but back in April a senior exec claimed its engineers had already developed a semi-autonomous vehicle capable of operating without any human intervention for up to 1000km.