BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China's top economic planner has cleared the way for development of domestic new energy cars and intelligent vehicles.

The country will promote the innovative development of the intelligent vehicles and develop the auto industry in the "strategic direction" of intelligent vehicles, according to the draft version of the Intelligent Automobile Innovation and Development Strategy, which was released by China's National Development and Reform Commission to solicit opinions.

China will develop the artificial intelligence and big data to make the new energy auto industry competitive in the global market.

Baidu is becoming a major new player in self-driving technology. The company announced a big upgrade to its open-source platform "Apollo 2.0" at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018 in Las Vegas, the United States, to speed up the development and production of autonomous vehicles.

China has the world's largest new energy auto industry. The country sold more than 490,000 new energy cars in the first 11 months of 2017, and the sales are expected to exceed 577,000 units in the whole year, according to statistics by EV-Volumes, an electric vehicle sales database.