China News Service, Beijing, March 31 (Reporter Chen Hang) Autonomous taxis, autonomous minibuses, autonomous shuttles, autonomous delivery vehicles, autonomous sweepers, autonomous patrol vehicles, autonomous heavy freight trucks , unmanned retail vehicles...Beijing's self-driving cars have quietly entered the daily lives of citizens, accelerating towards a broader future.
Autonomous driving integrates innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data, advanced communications, and high-precision positioning. It has become an important engine for China to shape new development advantages in the automotive field, attracting cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, and Changsha to seize development opportunities. Highlands.
As a national science and technology innovation center, Beijing continues to promote autonomous driving technology to be smarter, safer, and more efficient, and has pioneered vehicle road testing, which has attracted widespread attention.
Tafera Debe Imam, Ambassador of Ethiopia to China, and more than 40 diplomats from embassies of more than 20 countries in China recently walked into the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone and boarded eight driverless vehicles in batches. Experience the “black technology” of autonomous driving.
During the entire 5.2-kilometer journey, the driverless vehicle drove smoothly, autonomously identified traffic lights and obstacles, and automatically changed lanes according to road conditions. It took about ten minutes to successfully arrive at the Innovation Center of the Beijing High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone from the headquarters of JD.com Group in about ten minutes. Through this test ride, Tafera Debe Imam felt the achievements of Beijing’s development in the field of driverless cars. Agna, commercial officer of the Slovak Embassy in China, and Dong Haotian, economic counselor of the Mexican Embassy in China, also expressed their desire to actively promote practical cooperation.
On March 28, diplomats from many countries stationed in China experienced driverless cars in Beijing. (Photo courtesy of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government)
Starting from September 2020, Beijing has started to build the world's first network-connected and cloud-controlled high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone (hereinafter referred to as the demonstration zone) with the Economic and Technological Development Zone as the core. In more than three years, the construction of the demonstration area has been iterated to the 3.0 stage: the automatic driving connection between the demonstration area and Daxing Airport has been opened to provide more choices for night passengers; the roads are cleaned at night by driverless sanitation vehicles, which can be used in rain or shine. Fatigue and no dozing; driverless taxis have been put into commercial operation, providing passengers with better privacy... As technology accelerates, the scenarios for autonomous driving in Beijing are becoming more and more abundant.
As a megacity that attaches great importance to the development of the autonomous vehicle industry, Beijing is planning to build an autonomous driving demonstration zone on a larger scale and create more benchmark cases for application scenarios.
On March 28, diplomats from many countries stationed in China visited the Innovation Center of the Beijing High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone. (Photo courtesy of the Foreign Affairs Office of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government)
In June this year, Beijing will launch the 4.0 phase of demonstration zone construction. By then, the scope of the demonstration area will be expanded from the current 160 square kilometers to 600 square kilometers, of which 440 square kilometers are located in Tongzhou and Shunyi; more than 400 road intersections and 10 kilometers of highway roadside intelligent equipment and smart city private networks will be fully deployed. Coverage, a city-level engineering test platform has been initially built; five key railway hub passenger stations including Beijing South Railway Station, Fengtai Station, Chaoyang Station, Qinghe Station, and City Sub-Central Station, as well as autonomous driving test design plans for Daxing International Airport and Capital International Airport will be launched. Realize the expansion of applications such as passenger cars, intelligent connected buses, and urban road cleaning, and form continuous coverage of policies and facilities.
While a series of practical results have been achieved and the speed of industrial development has increased, the existing challenges of autonomous vehicles cannot be ignored. They need to be further tested by large-scale testing and implementation, and they also need to be followed up by the regulatory system and given greater tolerance. and development space.
In December last year, the Ministry of Transport of China issued the "Guidelines for Transportation Safety Services of Autonomous Vehicles (Trial)", which clarified the specific circumstances under which they can be used, used with caution and are prohibited by application scenarios, providing direction guidance for the application of autonomous vehicles in the field of transportation services. .
Beijing’s self-driving cars will receive legislative protection this year. The relevant person in charge of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology said in an interview with the media this month that Beijing’s autonomous vehicle legislation is advancing in an orderly manner and has been included in the 2024 legislative review project of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, and strives to complete the review and release within this year. During the legislative process, it is planned to solidify the experience in vehicle-road-cloud integration construction in the demonstration zone and replicate and promote it throughout the city, which is expected to press the "accelerator button" for industrial development. (over)