Shenzhen plans to open 53 main roads for the testing of unmanned driving, making it the first Chinese city that allows large-scale tests of autonomous vehicles.
On August 24, the Transport Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality announced that the third round of open road driver-less vehicle tests for intelligent network connected vehicles (ICVs) had been confirmed. Fifty-three roads have been opened this time, with a total mileage of nearly 56.68 km.
At present, Shenzhen has opened approximately 201.37 km of test roads for ICVs. The first batch consists of 105 roads and 124 km, while the second batch includes 29 roads and 20.69 km.
According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the distance of open test roads in China has surpassed 5,000km, and the distance of safety test has exceeded 10 million km this year up to now. Furthermore, the ministry will accelerate the commercialization of driverless technology and road test demonstrations of ICVs.
On August 1, Shenzhen’s first-of-its-kind regulation tailored for smart and connected vehicle management came into effect. The regulation clarifies rules for liability and auto insurance coverage in the event of car accidents. The fundamental purpose of this regulation is to ramp up the commercialization of self-driving solutions.
In fact, there still exists a gap between demonstration scenarios and authentically commercial scenarios. The current state of autonomous vehicles still presents multiple shortcomings, such as software, component costs, compute challenges, and security, making it challenging to achieve fully autonomous driving.
In addition to Shenzhen, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hunan, and other places in China have also expedited the introduction and implementation of policies related to driverless vehicles and commercialization processes.