Xinhua reported that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Ministry of Transport recently released the “Basic Information on Access Permission and Road Drive Pilot for Intelligent Internet-Connected Vehicles.” They identified nine consortia composed of car manufacturers and users, including NIO and Chang‘an, which will conduct intelligent Internet-connected vehicle access and road drive pilots in seven cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The pilot products cover three major categories: passenger cars, buses, and trucks. This signifies a crucial step forward for the large-scale application of high-level intelligent driving in China.
China’s standard on “Automated Driving Classification for Automobiles” divides autonomous driving into six levels from L0 to L5, corresponding to “emergency assistance, partial driving assistance, combined driving assistance, conditional automated driving, high-level automated driving, and fully automated driving.”
High-level intelligent driving has become the focus of competition among major car companies. Previously, multiple car brands, including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, IM Motors, Chang’an, Arcfox, Deep Blue, Avita, Seres, and BYD, announced they had obtained L3 autonomous driving test licenses. As of the end of April 2024, China has opened over 29,000 kilometers of intelligent connected vehicle test roads, issued more than 6,800 test and demonstration licenses, and the total road test mileage has exceeded 88 million kilometers.
The new pilot program is the next step, after the vehicle research and testing, to promote mass-produced intelligent models on road drive.
Source: Xinhua, June 25, 2024 http://www.news.cn/tech/20240625/d21252e6ec504019b5a65472192e578f/c.html