Agreements
and cooperation projects inked during the 2020 World Autonomous Vehicle
Ecosystem Conference in Shanghai on Monday and Tuesday are expected to
put the Yangtze River Delta region at the forefront of China's
autonomous driving industry efforts.
Prominent
among the agreements signed was the one between the authorities of
Shanghai and the three provinces in the region-Jiangsu, Zhejiang and
Anhui, to set up a national pilot zone for intelligent connected
vehicles.
Since the
application of autonomous vehicles relies not only on the promotion of
the self-driving technology for single cars but also on the building of
smart roads, the agreements are crucial for the construction of roadside
infrastructure and large-scale testing in the future, experts said.
Under the
agreement, the economic and information departments of the local
governments have agreed to jointly design a series of standards for
smart traffic lights, 5G base stations, protocols for communication,
high-resolution road maps, and traffic management platforms.
The
governments will focus on the construction of smart infrastructure for
interprovincial highways such as the G2 Shanghai-Nanjing, G60
Shanghai-Kunshan, and the Hangzhou-Shaoxing-Ningbo expressway.
Efforts will
also be focused on encouraging various types of autonomous vehicles in
the region for private use, public transport, ride-sharing, logistics
and street cleaning.
Gao Xiang,
director of Jiading district of Shanghai, which hosts the Shanghai
International Automobile City and the country's first demonstration zone
for intelligent connected vehicles, said the district has already
released the first testing licenses in the Yangtze River Delta Region.
"By the end of
this year, the district will open 315 kilometers of roads for
intelligent connected vehicles, and by the end of 2022 the figure will
reach 1,300 kilometers in the district," she said.
Cheng Bo, dean
of the Suzhou Automotive Research Institute of Tsinghua University,
said there is an urgent need for standards on roadside smart
infrastructure regarding issues like what kind of sensors need to be
installed on traffic poles, at what intervals and in what road
conditions.
"It will be a
large-scale engineering project, which needs a great amount of labor and
resources. Once done, it will be difficult to change," he said.
Luo Junjie,
head of the No 1 industrial equipment department of the Ministry of
Industry and Information Technology, said: "The next five years will be
important for the automotive technology industry as they will bring
fierce competition and strategic opportunities.
"Efforts will
be focused on improving the design and rules to help companies surmount
technological bottlenecks and explore new business models."
The second
phase of the 5G smart traffic demonstration zone in Jiading was launched
during the conference jointly by the district government, SAIC Motor,
Huawei and China Mobile.
The
construction of smart roadside infrastructure will generate a large
quantity of data. The municipal government also unveiled the Shanghai
Intelligent Connected Vehicle Public Data Center, which will collect
data from both testing cars and roadside sensors, and provide services
including data analysis and early warnings.