China's Geely teams up with Tencent on smart car tech

China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which owns Volvo Cars and holds 9.7% of Daimler, said on Tuesday it has signed an agreement with Tencent Holdings Ltd to develop smart vehicle cockpit and autonomous driving.

In the latest such partnership in the fast-evolving sector, the companies will jointly develop smart car cockpits to have more mobile and mobility service applications, and explore testing of autonomous driving, Geely said in a statement.

The deal with Tencent, which has investments in EV makers including Tesla and Nio, is developing smart car technologies, is the third recent partnership by Hangzhou-based Geely with companies involved in the tech sector.

Geely said this month it would launch a smart electric vehicle (EV) company with Baidu Inc and later that it would form a separate venture with Foxconn to provide contract manufacturing for automakers.