China steps up development of intelligent vehicles

China is stepping up the push to bolster the development of intelligent connected vehicles and encourage trials of vehicle-road-cloud collaborative system in more cities, according to the country's top industry regulator.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other government departments issued a new guideline on Wednesday that stressed efforts to accelerate the construction of intelligent road infrastructure, ensuring all of the pilot vehicles to be equipped with the C-V2X system.

C-V2X stands for cellular-vehicle-to-everything, which enables vehicles to communicate with each other and everything around them to reduce traffic accidents.

The guideline also encourages the large-scale trial application of smart buses, smart passenger vehicles, automatic parking, urban logistics and autonomous delivery services in designated areas of a city. The move is also expected to propel the commercialization of high-level autonomous driving technology.