Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, December 14th. Question: How far is it from large-scale commercial use of autonomous taxis on the roads in Beijing?
Xinhua News Agency "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters Guo Yujing and Lu Chang
Orders are placed via mobile phones, and "auto-driving taxis" provide travel services.
Recently, the country's first pilot commercialization of autonomous driving travel services was launched in Beijing.
Industry insiders believe that this marks a new stage of exploration in the domestic autonomous driving field from test demonstrations to commercial pilots.
Reporter’s experience: Call a car in one minute, with a safety officer on board
Recently, the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone Work Office announced that it has officially opened the country’s first autonomous driving travel service commercialization pilot. Baidu and Xiaoma Zhixing have become the first batch of companies approved to carry out commercialization pilots in Beijing Economic Development Zone 60 In the area of square kilometers, no more than 100 autonomous vehicles will be invested to carry out commercial pilot services.
On November 25, the first domestic pilot for commercialization of autonomous driving travel services was officially launched in Beijing, and reporters experienced it on the same day.
On Hongda South Road in Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone, the reporter called for an autonomous vehicle through Baidu's "Turnip Run" app. The destination was Han's Square, about 2.6 kilometers away.
The taxi interface of the "Carrot Run" App is similar to commonly used online taxi-hailing software. The difference is that passengers need to get on and off the bus at a set stop. The distance between these stops is about 500 meters.
About 1 minute after sending the order, the vehicle will receive the order.
Three minutes later, a white red flag SUV drove up and parked on the side of the road.
A safety officer sits in the driver's seat of the self-driving vehicle, but he does not actively intervene in any operation.
After the reporter took a seat in the back row, entered the four-digit tail number of the mobile phone on the screen behind the front seat cushion, and chose to open the itinerary, and the vehicle started to the destination.
Waiting for traffic lights, overtaking, merging... the vehicle travels automatically throughout the journey, very smooth, and arrives at the destination in about 7 minutes.
Since the pilot has commercial subsidies, the actual fee is 1.42 yuan.
In accordance with the management requirements of the pilot commercialization of autonomous driving travel services in Beijing, each vehicle needs to be equipped with a safety officer.
These security officers take up their posts with certificates after professional training and examinations.
Security officers are different from traditional drivers in that they "take over" the vehicle only in emergencies.
In order to improve the safety and reliability of vehicles, Baidu provides dual guarantees of "vehicle-road coordination" and 5G "cloud driving" in the commercialized autonomous vehicles.
"Cloud driving" personnel can "make up" for the unmanned driving system at any time.
It is understood that there are currently about 3,000 long-term taxis and online car-hailing in the area, and the investment of 100 "autonomous taxis" has played a supplementary role in public transportation.
The reporter found that many people in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone have become accustomed to traveling in self-driving vehicles.
Prior to this, Baidu's "self-driving taxis" operated for free.
According to the latest statistics from Baidu, the number of users has not decreased but increased in the past two weeks since the commercialization of the pilot fee collection operation.
Since November, the overall user satisfaction has been 4.9 points, and the favorable rate accounted for more than 94%.
The most common evaluation tags selected by users are “scientific and technological”, “willing to recommend to others” and “willing to ride again”.
Autonomous driving is developing rapidly
At present, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Changsha, Cangzhou and other places have opened the normal operation of autonomous driving, but this is the first time for commercial charging.
What is the basis for commercial operations in Beijing?
It is understood that in April of this year, relying on Beijing’s high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone, Beijing established the country’s first smart networked vehicle policy pilot zone to promote road testing, demonstration applications and commercial operations through the first trial of the “supervisory sandbox”. Serve.
Since the establishment of the pilot zone, policies such as unmanned delivery vehicles on the road, highway testing, and unmanned testing have been issued, and the cumulative safety test mileage is currently close to 3 million kilometers.
Kong Lei, director of the work office of Beijing's high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone, said that the current management policy innovation has achieved good results, and the conditions are ready for commercialization pilots.
Autonomous driving forms a closed loop in the industry, which inevitably needs to go through the final link of commercialization trials.
Wei Dong, vice president of Baidu's intelligent driving business group and chief safety operation officer, said that up to now, the total test mileage has exceeded 16 million kilometers, and its "Carrot Run" has been opened to normal operations in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Changsha, and Cangzhou. .
In the third quarter of this year, "Carrot Run" provided 115,000 rides.
At present, many parts of my country have accelerated their exploration of the development of autonomous driving.
In Shanghai, 4 test areas of Jiading, Lingang, Fengxian, and Jinqiao have opened 253 autonomous driving test roads, with more than 5,000 test scenarios; Wuxi, Jiangsu will operate 3 5G autonomous driving network-hailing buses as normal...
Ouyang Rihui, deputy dean of the China Internet Economic Research Institute of Central University of Finance and Economics, said that with the rapid accumulation of the core element of "data" and the high encouragement of innovation by domestic policies, autonomous driving will usher in a new stage of rapid development.
"Most people may underestimate the speed of development of autonomous driving."
How far is it from large-scale commercial use?
Wei Dong revealed that in the first year of testing, Baidu's autopilot service has accumulated more than 100,000 registered users in the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone. The current monthly active users are 29,000, of which more than 40% are users who place orders every week.
"In the future, we will decide whether to apply for additional vehicle launches in light of changes in user needs."
Wei Dong believes that in the short term, autonomous driving commercial services are still a supplement to traditional travel methods, but in the long run, as more and more road networks allow autonomous driving tests, areas in the city will gradually expand connections and provide more Space to test various application scenarios.
"This will be an orderly management and open process."
"Policies, technology, and public acceptance are the keys to the acceleration of the commercialization of the autonomous driving industry." Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Xiaoma Zhixing, believes that autonomous driving technology has passed the 1.0 stage of dealing with conventional scenarios and needs to be more advanced. Scale and more extreme scenarios to verify its safety.
According to statistics from relevant departments of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in the past five years, the number of hackers' attacks on smart cars has increased by 20 times, and 27.6% of these attacks involve vehicle control.
Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360 Group, believes that the Internet of Vehicles and the network of car factories are at risk of being attacked, which may lead to the control of vehicles.
Therefore, the safety capability assessment of the car factory is a required course in the future.
It is worth noting that the supporting policies issued by Beijing this time clarify that passenger personal information, App log information, geographic information, automobile and system data, traffic flow data, and business data generated during the commercialization pilot should be included in For storage and use in China, it is not allowed to leave the country without approval, and enterprises also need to have a complete network security protection system.
Kong Lei said that the pilot zone will take safety and control as the first principle, and on the basis of complementation with the traditional travel service system, mutual benefit and win-win situation, the commercialization pilot section or area will be gradually expanded in a timely manner, and commercialization will be promoted in stages. Operation, supporting enterprises to gradually transition from unmanned road testing to unmanned commercialization pilot.