China's driverless heavy-haul train completes trial run

A driverless heavy-haul train successfully made its first trial run on Thursday morning on Shuozhou-Huanghua Railway, a major channel for transporting coal from western regions to eastern regions of China, marking a new breakthrough in the evolution from automated driving to fully unmanned driving in the country's heavy-haul railway transport sector, CCTV News reported.

The train departed from Huanghua South Station at 8:36 am on Thursday, and after two and a half hours of smooth operation, stopped at the designated location on time at Dongying West Station.

The train, with 108 carriages, is 1.3 kilometers long and has a gross weight of 10,800 metric tons. The successful trial run filled several domestic technological gaps, realizing unmanned driving of the train and unmanned management of the station.

With the wide application of driverless technology, the average running speed of the heavy-haul trains is expected to increase by 1.7 kilometers per hour, while the traction energy consumption is projected to decrease by 2.9 percent, significantly improving the efficiency of China's west-east coal transmission.