Beijing, Apr 18 (IANS): Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has confirmed that it has been working on autonomous driving technology, the China Daily reported on Wednesday.

Wang Gang, Chief Scientist at the company's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Labs, is leading the research team and it have made rapid progress, the daily quoted Alibaba as saying.

According to Xinhua news agency, the company's research aims to reach Level 4, which means the self-driving vehicle can fully drive itself without human intervention in certain circumstances.

Chinese authorities issued regulations on April 12 to allow local road tests for intelligent connected vehicles, which covers different degrees of autonomous driving.

Alibaba has conducted regular road tests of its self-driving vehicles and the company was looking to hire an additional 50 experts to boost the technology, according to China Daily.

Alibaba's move follows its rivals, Baidu and Tencent, two other Chinese Internet conglomerates that are also developing self-driving vehicles.