Autonomous taxis are still a long way from large-scale application
2024-08-17
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Master ZhongThe "Carrot Run" driverless taxis recently launched in Wuhan have attracted attention. As one of the first pilot cities for the coordinated development of smart city infrastructure and intelligent connected vehicles in the country, Wuhan was the first in the country to release a policy for the commercial demonstration operation of autonomous driving. At the same time, it is also supported by a solid automobile industry. The Wuhan Economic Development Zone, known as the "China Auto Valley", has many auto factories including Lotus, Dongfeng Mengshi, and Lantu Auto, with an annual industry output value of more than 300 billion yuan. In the past two years, Wuhan has accelerated the opening of autonomous driving test roads, achieving breakthroughs in multiple autonomous driving commercial application scenarios such as cross-regional traffic and airport highway traffic; at the end of last year, Wuhan passed the acceptance assessment of the first batch of "double intelligence" pilot cities in the country by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and its comprehensive score ranked second, second only to Shanghai. At present, more than 20 cities in the country have issued local policies for autonomous driving tests, and more than 60 companies have obtained autonomous driving test licenses.Obviously, the development of autonomous driving is driven by favorable policies. As one of the labels of smart cities in many cities, autonomous driving is the most important representative of automobile intelligence. From the perspective of industrial development, it will be conducive to the formation of new industrial added value. Europe, the United States, Japan, South Korea and my country have all put forward detailed policy visions, development plans and regulatory guarantees for autonomous driving. Many countries are also piloting intelligent transportation systems to promote the testing and application of autonomous driving vehicles on public roads. These efforts show that this technology is expected to be widely popularized and applied in the next decade.Although driverless cars are seen as the end of autonomous driving technology, in fact, each level of autonomous driving technology corresponds to different R&D investment scales and specific application scenarios in different markets. From a social perspective, driverless cars will significantly improve and improve vehicle driving safety, greatly reduce the accident rate of road traffic, and effectively reduce the driver's driving fatigue. Driverless cars will have a wide range of special application scenarios in the future, and the demand will also be prioritized. About 20 years ago, Australian iron ore mining areas were already using driverless transport vehicles to solve a series of problems such as staffing, logistics support and dangerous working surfaces in remote areas. At present, driverless freight vehicles in major ports in my country are showing their prowess in port collection and port logistics transportation. In the future, driverless vehicles will be increasingly used in transportation in remote mining areas with harsh climatic and environmental conditions, border patrols, specific military and police purposes, as well as inter-city and inter-provincial long-distance freight, passenger transportation in closed parks in cities, night sanitation vehicles, and buses on specific routes.On the other hand, the demand for driverless city taxis should be ranked relatively low in terms of urgency and consumer necessity. Taxis and online ride-hailing cars in various cities in China are now sufficient to meet the current travel needs of people in domestic cities, and are also an important channel for solving stable and flexible employment for many people. Taxis and online ride-hailing cars in each region account for a small part of the passenger car ownership. Taking the latest data from Guangzhou as an example, the average daily passenger volume of public transportation in Guangzhou in May this year was 12.83 million, of which the average daily passenger volume of cruising taxis was only 830,000. The annual sales of passenger cars in the domestic market exceed 20 million, and the number of new online ride-hailing cars and taxis is only over 1 million, accounting for only a small part of the entire passenger car market. On the surface, driverless taxis have neither obvious expected scale growth nor consumer rigid demand, and the investment in the entire project is tens of billions of yuan, so what is the intention of the relevant companies to "go against the current"?In fact, if more and more taxi users experience driverless taxis through the fare subsidies that the companies continue to lose money on, and gradually accept this experience and model, it will affect the potential user group that only needs to solve point-to-point travel needs in the future, and gradually convert a large number of potential passenger car buyers into driverless taxi service users. In turn, the national fleet size, user scale, revenue and cash flow of driverless taxis will be fully expanded, and eventually an independent vertical business ecosystem will be formed.No matter how promising the prospect of driverless cars is, as an immature intelligent technology, driverless taxis still have a long way to go before they can be rolled out on a large scale in cities. Over the years, they have been cautiously restricted to specially designated test areas in cities for testing and demonstration operations, gradually accumulating data and experience, and continuously improving and optimizing solutions. They are rarely put into cities for full-area testing. After all, the public roads in any city are not a test field for new technologies. The performance and functions of vehicles on urban public road traffic must meet the strict requirements of national safety laws and regulations. At the same time, government regulatory authorities must attach great importance to access requirements, implement process supervision, and strengthen emergency plans. Put the road safety of test vehicles and the personal safety of passengers first. A steed should be trained enough in the stable before it can gallop freely over a wider territory. (The author is an automotive industry analyst)▲
