Many places open autonomous driving road test ranges, and the development of smart cars exceeds expectations

Recently, many places have continued to open up the scope of autonomous driving road testing. Six cities have opened manned testing permits, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, and Cangzhou. How far are we from intelligent connected cars? What problems are there in urban construction of autonomous driving environments? How to build an industrial ecosystem... The reporter interviewed relevant experts and industry insiders on this.

On August 24, the Guangzhou Municipal Transportation Bureau stated that it had carried out road testing of intelligent connected vehicles, issued a total of 55 test notices, and opened 67 test roads with a total length of 135 kilometers. Previously, the Changchun Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology and other three departments jointly issued a "Notice" to select the corresponding road section of the Changchun Automobile Economic and Technological Development Zone as a test road for intelligent connected vehicles... In recent times, many places have continued to open up the scope of autonomous driving road testing. How far are we from intelligent connected vehicles? How can the automotive industry cope with unprecedented changes in the industry?

Smart car development exceeds expectations

"The direction of the automobile revolution is intelligence and networking, which is also the focus of future competition." At the 3rd Global Smart Car Frontier Summit held recently, Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100, pointed out that the automobile revolution is not carried out in isolation. It is paralleled by the energy revolution, information revolution, transportation revolution and smart city construction. Next, networking and intelligence should be placed in a more important position. This is the focus of future competition and is also necessary to give full play to the automobile revolution to benefit society.

Chen Qingtai said that in the future, intelligent networked electric vehicles will be the leading core products of energy revolution, information revolution, transportation revolution and smart city construction. It can widely absorb new developments and new potentials in new energy informatization, networking, intelligence, big data, as well as new technologies, new materials, electronic power, advanced manufacturing, etc., and become a large platform for the integration and innovation of many industries.

At present, with the rapid update of basic technologies, the automotive intelligent technology system has become more and more perfect, and intelligent connected vehicles have more detailed and specific landing scenarios. From L2 to L5, each level of autonomous driving has successively developed technology and product systems with market application prospects, which on the one hand enriches the connotation of automotive intelligence, and on the other hand makes the speed of intelligent landing exceed expectations.

The national level also attaches great importance to the development of intelligent networked vehicles. In September last year, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Outline for Building a Strong Transportation Country, proposing to strengthen the research and development of intelligent networked vehicles (intelligent vehicles, autonomous driving, and vehicle-road collaboration) to form an independent and controllable complete industrial chain. In February this year, several ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Intelligent Vehicle Innovation and Development Strategy", proposing to follow the trend of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution, seize the opportunity of the industrial intelligent development strategy, and accelerate the innovation and development of intelligent vehicles.

Under the tide of intelligence, traditional car companies have accelerated their transformation. Chen Hao, vice president of Dongfeng Motor Corporation and deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan Passenger Vehicle Company, revealed that Dongfeng Nissan has introduced the Nissan ProPILOT automatic driving assistance system and carried out localized development in combination with China's complex and changeable road conditions; and cooperated with leading Internet companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei to build an open and extensible intelligent application platform and carry out cross-border ecological cooperation.

Feng Xingya, general manager of Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., Ltd., introduced that GAC Group has taken three major actions. First, it focuses on the research and development of core technologies to provide Chinese consumers with smart car products that they trust. Second, it uses the Intelligent Connected New Energy Vehicle Industrial Park as a vehicle to strive to build a globally competitive smart car industry cluster. Third, it is open to cooperation, win-win and symbiosis, and cooperates with upstream and downstream companies to form a community of shared future.

Vehicle-road collaborative development is recognized

At present, among the cities that have opened up road tests for autonomous driving, six cities have opened up manned testing permits, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan and Cangzhou. It is reported that among the cities that have opened up manned autonomous driving tests, there are three companies that have actually conducted manned autonomous driving tests and have large-scale fleets (30 or more): Baidu Apollo, WeRide/WeRide Guangdong, and Pony.ai.

Ran Bin, director of the Southeast University-University of Wisconsin Intelligent Connected Transportation Joint Research Institute, believes that vehicle-road collaboration is to treat the road and the car as a complete system, using smart roads to make up for the shortcomings of intelligent connected cars and improve safety, reliability and related functions. Developing intelligent cars with vehicle-road collaboration will soon be able to achieve level 3 autonomous driving.

Feng Xingya also believes that the single-vehicle intelligence + vehicle-road collaboration route is the solution suitable for the Chinese market. The huge market capacity, the innovation of the consumer Internet business model, and the unique advantages in 5G systems, artificial intelligence, and software talents will give birth to smart cars based on China's ecological industry.

"Although many cities are currently very active in developing self-driving cars, their starting points and implementation methods are different. Some cities just want to advertise themselves, and companies cannot participate after going there; some cities don’t know how to do it because the industry is too new and too large, and there is a lot of blindness in operation." Zhang Yongwei, secretary-general and chief expert of the China Electric Vehicle 100, pointed out that at present, an industrial ecosystem cannot be formed by relying solely on a single company to "take on everything."

Zhang Yongwei believes that the solution for autonomous driving cities must be the result of the joint participation of multiple subjects in an innovative ecosystem; a set of promotion mechanisms must also be established, which requires not only the foresight of urban decision-makers and organizational guarantees for the promotion process, but also policy and regulatory support that encourages the courage to take the lead in trial and error.

"The testing environment, the length of open roads, the variety of roads, and whether an integrated data platform can be provided are all important factors in determining whether or not a city can be attracted to the autonomous driving environment." Zhang Yongwei said that at present, the urban construction level faces many challenges in terms of autonomous driving environment, such as focusing on construction but not operation, focusing on data but not application, lacking top-level design, and lacking strategic vision. Much work needs to be further straightened out.

Technology is king in the final analysis

Li Qian, vice president of Human Horizons Technologies Co., Ltd., said that in the wave of new energy vehicles and intelligent driving, emerging car manufacturers have been advancing one after another and accumulated a lot of experience in success and failure. He does not quite agree with the concept of seizing the initiative and believes that companies should work hard to polish products, algorithms and architectures, and "take it slow."

At present, intelligent driving technology is in the process of continuous upgrading. Enterprises may prepare from the single-vehicle intelligent infrastructure or achieve breakthroughs in the autonomous driving brain. In the final analysis, it is technology-oriented and technology is king. "There are many levels of automotive intelligence, and the development speed will be very fast." Zhong Zhihua, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out that if enterprises do not pay attention to this trend in time, they will definitely fall behind.

Mo Luyi, general manager of Pony.ai, believes that autonomous driving technology is in a stage of rapid development and has not yet reached the level of discussing competition. The entire industry is constantly working hard to overcome technical difficulties in order to solve unmanned and large-scale problems. Any autonomous driving company that solves any problem will be a milestone breakthrough for the entire industry. Only when the entire industry continues to promote technological progress can we truly discuss large-scale commercial implementation.

"Smart cars have moved from laboratories and demonstration operations to mass production. The entry of new products into the market is also a process of new technologies being implemented and tested by consumers." Feng Xingya believes that at this stage, companies, capital and the public are no longer confused by concepts, but have entered a cooling-off period. This is the law of development and growth of new technologies and new things, and it is also the only way to industrialize.