BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has confirmed that it has been working on autonomous driving technology, China Daily reported Wednesday.

Wang Gang, chief scientist at the company's AI Labs, is leading the research team and they have made rapid progress, the newspaper quoted Alibaba as saying.

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, said the report.

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 the newspaper.

Alibaba's move follows its rivals, Baidu and Tencent, another two Chinese internet conglomerates, which are also developing self-driving vehicles.