Baidu has launched Project Apollo, in a move to unite the automotive industry around its portfolio of autonomous driving technologies – including a software platform, hardware designs, and reference vehicles. However, the fairly insular approaches of automakers means that there is unlikely going to be much of a clamor to jump on board Apollo. The goal of Apollo is to provide an open software platform to its partners in the autonomous driving industry, so that they can develop their own driving systems based on Baidu’s reference design. Baidu believes its “robust, mature, and secure autonomous driving technology” can provide similar potential benefits as the Apollo lunar program, from which Baidu borrowed the name to convey its belief in the transformative…