State policies set to challenge and guide autonomous driving

Ministry of Science and Technology announces rules designed to push technology's limits

China has recently rolled out a slew of policies designed to regulate the development of autonomous driving, which analysts say are paving the way for the technology's healthy advancement and commercialization in the world's largest vehicle market.

Last week, the Ministry of Science and Technology said in a notice that it will support the construction of 10 major artificial intelligence application scenarios, with autonomous driving being one of them.

It will encourage tests of conditional autonomous driving at complex road sections including crossroads to speed up the development of driverless logistics vehicles on expressways, high-level autonomous driving vehicles, smart internet-connected buses as well as autonomous valet parking.

The notice came within a week of the release of China's first national draft guideline on the use of autonomous driving vehicles for public transport, issued by the Ministry of Transport.

In the guideline, the ministry said it will encourage the adoption of autonomous buses in enclosed Bus Rapid Transit or BRT systems, and allow autonomous vehicles to offer taxi services under simple and relatively controllable scenarios.

Analysts said the rules on self-driving vehicles are expected to better regulate the industry, providing a reference and guidance for their development and commercialization.

Technology companies have been exploring the potential of the cutting-edge technology and testing vehicles on the road.

Apollo Go, Baidu's autonomous ride-hailing service arm, is testing its robotaxi fleets in designated areas in around 10 cities across the country.

As the world's largest autonomous mobility services provider, it has driven passengers for over 1 million trips free of charge.

In July, Beijing launched China's first pilot area for commercial autonomous driving vehicle services in its southern suburb of Yizhuang.

Apollo and Pony.ai, another major autonomous driving startup, were the first enterprises granted permission to offer paid services.

Earlier this month, local authorities in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, and Chongqing offered permits to the companies for charging passengers in driverless vehicles.

Now Apollo Go, like taxi companies, is providing paid services in the two megacities, with five self-driving vehicles running in each city, without drivers or safety operators sitting behind the steering wheel.

Lyu Jinghong, an intelligent mobility analyst at research firm BloombergNEF, said more Chinese cities are expected to follow suit by allowing for robotaxi tests and commercialization, which will help autonomous driving developers improve their technologies and explore business models.

BloombergNEF estimated that China will operate the world's largest robotaxi fleet with about 12 million units by 2040, followed by the United States, with around 7 million autonomous vehicles.

Yu Qian, CEO and founder of Chinese autonomous driving startup QCraft, said the autonomous driving sector is arriving at a "golden inflection point of growth", with policies becoming increasingly clear and open, and technologies such as 5G and algorithms more powerful.

Starting from July, QCraft and Chinese ride-sharing platform T3 began to provide robotaxi services, offering rides to passengers using self-driving cars within certain areas in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, where the companies had already been testing such services.

Autonomous driving technology is not limited to robotaxi. Many autonomous driving companies in China have been striving to advance the technology in other areas as well and accelerate its commercialization.

WeRide, headquartered in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, is specialized in applying autonomous driving to intelligent transportation, freight and sanitation.

Its driverless sanitation vehicle, Robosweeper, has been tested on open roads in Guangzhou's Nansha district since May.

Shenzhen-based DeepRoute.ai aims to make autonomous driving less costly. It has cut down the cost of Level-4 autonomous driving solutions to less than $10,000 and applied it to its robotaxi fleet and medium-duty trucks, according to Zhou Guang, founder of Deep-Route.ai.

"The technology has been well-received among automakers, and we're working closely with them to integrate our system into consumer vehicles so that truly affordable Level-4 vehicles will soon be a reality," said Zhou.

The favorable policies and the companies' efforts are also seeing the increasing popularity of lower-level autonomous driving technology, also known as driving-assist functions.

Statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology show that 30 percent of new vehicles sold in the first half of this year feature Level-2 functions.

That means, around 3.61 million vehicles that hit the road from January to June have functions including lane keep and cruise control.

Auto suppliers are investing to keep up with the demand in the Chinese market for such functions.

In early August, German auto parts supplier ZF decided to invest 320 million yuan ($47.42 million) to expand a plant in Shanghai to produce electric steering systems, which the company said can support autonomous driving functions at different levels.