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with the frequent emergence of favorable policies, many places are eager to compete for the high ground of the autonomous driving industry.

from a policy perspective, in july this year, the ministry of industry and information technology, the ministry of public security, the ministry of transport and other five departments officially announced that my country will carry out pilot projects for the integrated application of "vehicle-road-cloud" for intelligent connected vehicles in 20 cities including beijing, shanghai, guangzhou, shenzhen, chongqing and shenyang. this move will promote the integrated construction of "vehicle-road-cloud" in various places and build a complete system architecture to support the large-scale application of autonomous driving technology and connected functions.

for example, recently, the "guangzhou intelligent connected vehicle innovation and development regulations (draft amendment·draft for comments)" was released, which intends to support the application of intelligent connected vehicles in transportation hubs such as highways, airports, ports, and travel service scenarios such as urban buses and taxis; in july this year, the beijing municipal economic and information technology bureau solicited public opinions on the "beijing autonomous driving vehicle regulations (draft for comments)", and beijing intends to support the use of autonomous driving vehicles in urban public electric bus passenger transport, online car-hailing, car rental and other urban travel services.

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"the demand for industrial transformation and upgrading is an important factor driving cities to compete in the development of autonomous driving. traditional industries are currently facing the pressure of transformation and upgrading. autonomous driving, as a cutting-edge technology, has a huge industrial driving effect and can promote the development and upgrading of the entire industry." jiang han, a senior researcher at pangu think tank, said in an interview with a reporter from the "daily economic news".

many places are "racing" for autonomous driving

at the local level, according to incomplete statistics from reporters, about 50 places, including shenzhen, shanghai, jiangsu, hangzhou, etc., have issued autonomous driving pilot demonstration policies or formulated local legislation related to autonomous driving, and issued more than 40 relevant policies and regulations directly facing high-level intelligent driving. among them, first-tier cities have an absolute numerical advantage, and second- and third-tier cities are also actively following up.

overall, the current policies on autonomous driving are mainly divided into several stages, including "standard setting, commercial testing", etc., with the initial focus on the formulation of intelligent driving test standards.

taking beijing as an example, beijing issued the country's first policy related to road testing of autonomous vehicles in december 2017, including the "beijing guiding opinions on accelerating the promotion of road testing of autonomous vehicles (trial)" and the "beijing autonomous vehicle road testing management implementation rules (trial)", covering vehicle performance, safety requirements, testing procedures and other details.

next, the scope and authority of testing will be continuously expanded to promote autonomous driving from testing demonstration to commercial exploration. in february this year, beijing's high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone issued high-speed road manned demonstration application licenses to baidu, pony.ai, autox and weride, allowing them to carry out manned transfers between beijing economic and technological development zone (beijing yizhuang) and the terminal of beijing daxing international airport; shanghai issued the first batch of fully unmanned intelligent connected car demonstration application licenses at the world artificial intelligence conference in july this year.

at present, beijing, shanghai, guangzhou, shenzhen, wuhan, hangzhou and other places have carried out pilot demonstrations of driverless vehicles on public roads, allowing self-driving cars to engage in commercial trial operations such as robotaxi in specific areas and at specific times.

it is worth noting that, according to people's daily online, by the end of 2023, wuhan's autonomous driving test road mileage has exceeded 3,378.73 kilometers, covering 12 administrative regions and a radiation area of ​​about 3,000 square kilometers, ranking first in the country in terms of open mileage and number of regions. during the same period, shanghai's total autonomous driving test road mileage was about 2,000 kilometers; guangzhou was 1,623.5 kilometers; beijing was 1,143 kilometers; and shenzhen was 331.26 kilometers.

in fact, behind the active competition for commercial pilot opportunities for autonomous driving in various places, there are both policy guidance and considerations of economic benefits.

business opportunities behind autonomous driving

in jiang han's view, as a cutting-edge technology, autonomous driving can not only promote the deep integration and upgrading of multiple fields such as automobile manufacturing, information technology, and intelligent transportation, but also inject new vitality into urban economic development. at the same time, autonomous driving has great application potential in logistics, public transportation and other fields, providing cities with more diversified service solutions.

some industry insiders also believe that smart roads may become a hot spot for new infrastructure investment. for example, in may 2021, the ministry of housing and urban-rural development and the ministry of industry and information technology jointly announced a "double intelligence" (coordinated development of smart city infrastructure and intelligent connected vehicles) pilot. driven by policies, the construction of autonomous driving test roads in various places has actually entered a white-hot stage.

statistics from the ministry of industry and information technology show that as of now, my country has built 17 national-level intelligent connected vehicle testing areas, opened more than 32,000 kilometers of test roads, issued more than 7,700 test licenses, and tested more than 120 million kilometers of mileage. more than 8,700 intelligent roadside units (rsus) have been deployed in various places, and cloud control basic platform construction has been carried out in many places.

although many places have rushed to introduce policies to encourage commercial pilot projects for autonomous driving, it still has a long way to go before it can be truly "commercialized."

cheng shidong, director of the urban transportation research office of the national development and reform commission's comprehensive transportation research institute, believes that at present, the commercialization of autonomous driving is only a "symbolic charge" and has not yet formed a large-scale, mature business model and is still in the testing stage.

at the same time, the commercialization of autonomous driving requires the support of industrial chains, infrastructure, laws and regulations, and other supporting industries. this will also require a relatively large investment at the local level. "at present, the commercialization of autonomous driving is still unclear. if (localities) want to reap this dividend, they need to continue to invest," said an industry insider.

according to a report by iimedia research, the market size of china's intelligent connected car application services will reach 161.1 billion yuan in 2023, and is expected to increase to 222.3 billion yuan by 2025. mckinsey predicts that by 2030, china may become the world's largest autonomous driving market, and autonomous driving-related new car sales and travel services will generate more than 500 billion us dollars in revenue.

however, to further develop autonomous driving, we need to better solve problems in technology, data, infrastructure, etc. in a previous interview, yu qian, co-founder and ceo of qingzhou zhihang, said that the main difficulty in the commercialization of autonomous driving lies in technical issues. he believes that there are still many technical breakthroughs to be made in the widespread popularization of robotaxi. even waymo can only achieve full unmanned driving in a limited area. it is estimated that it will take another 5 to 10 years for robotaxi to be commercialized on a large scale.

in addition, the imperfection of laws and regulations is also one of the important factors hindering the development of autonomous driving to higher levels such as l3 and l4. ji xuehong, director of the automotive industry innovation research center of north china university of technology, told reporters: "as far as accidents caused by autonomous driving are concerned, there is no relatively clear and unified demarcation at the current policy level, and the division of responsibilities for autonomous driving (accidents) at different levels of l2~l4 is also different. referring to the recent "beijing autonomous driving vehicle regulations (draft for comments)", if there is no one in the car in an l4 autonomous driving accident, the responsibility of the vehicle owner and manager will be traced back."

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