DJI, the best known Chinese drone company, announced this week its move into making electric vehicles and will unveil its first products at the Shanghai Auto Show on April 19.

In Monday's announcement, DJI said it had launched a new brand, DJI Car Parts (大疆车载)，dedicated to serving the mobility market with space intelligence technology, focusing on the development, production, and sales of intelligent driving systems and their core components. This will include different pre-installed technology levels for autonomous driving functions, hardware and software solutions.

The news comes after rumors about this started going around over the last few months in January when Reuters reported that the company was working on self-driving technologies.

Specifically, the company worked on lidar sensors, a key component in self-driving cars, and packaged solutions for autonomous driving functions.

Shanghai-based yicai.com reported that DJI has been working on auto parts for five years, and it employs over 700 people for the new brand team. The corporate registration database Qcc.com shows that DJI registered this 100% owned subsidiary in July 2018. 

DJI’s announcement is bringing into the limelight the Chinese technology giants racing to join the electric vehicle market. On March 29, China’s leading mobile phone brand  Xiaomi made public its EVs making plans.  Other players in this market include both conventional manufacturers and tech giants of both internet firms and home appliance makers: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Didichuxin, Haier, and Huawei. Industry observers commented DJI’s participation would further reshape China’s EVs market.

Meanwhile, Huawei announced this week that it has partnered with three car companies to create three sub-brands and roll out products with the “Huawei Inside” logo in the fourth quarter of this year. It even claimed that its self-driving technology is better than Tesla’s, achieving 1,000 kilometers of intervention-free autonomous driving in urban areas, stronger than Tesla.

This week, Baidu received China’s first permit to demonstrate commercialized self-driving bus operation in Chongqing with a route of nearly 10 kilometers in both directions. It marks another breakthrough in developing autonomous driving in the country.