Photo provided by technology company Qcraft shows a driverless bus in the city of Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province on April 18, 2021. (Xinhua)
BEIJING, June 16 (Xinhua) -- The development of driverless vehicles is on fast track in China, and such vehicles have been applied in multiple scenarios at a faster speed, reported stcn.com Wednesday.
Driverless trucks, passenger cars, minibuses, and takeout delivery vehicles have all been used in the fight against the latest COVID-19 resurgence in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, transporting daily supplies for the citizens, etc.
It is the first time in China and the world that autonomous driving technology has been applied to epidemic prevention and emergency work, said Chen Jianhua, chief economist of Guangzhou Municipal Industry and Information Technology Bureau.
Industry insiders believe that the role played by driverless vehicles during the epidemic has not only injected intelligent power into epidemic prevention, but also accelerated the application of driverless vehicles in various scenarios.
In fact, recently, all kinds of autonomous driving vehicles, including unmanned delivery vehicles, unmanned trucks and taxis, have been promoted intensively. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Changsha and other places are all speeding up the demonstration and application of autonomous driving vehicles.
According to China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC, 601995.SH, 3908.HK), China's first joint-venture investment bank, 2020 to 2025 will be a critical period for China to leap towards advanced autonomous driving, and the country is expected to achieve a high degree of autonomous driving on suburban and urban roads by around 2030, and fully autonomous driving after 2035.
It is worth noting that in May this year, Baidu launched the paid operation test of RoboTaxi, an autonomous taxi service rolled out by the company, in the high-end industry comprehensive service area of new Shougang Group in Beijing, and changed the position of the security officer equipped with the vehicle from the main driver seat to the passenger seat next to it, realizing further "unmanned driving".
According to relevant studies, the "last one kilometer" of city delivery is where the highest cost is generated in the logistics distribution industry, and this is also one of the most valuable application scenarios for unmanned driving.
At present, JD.com, Meituan and other companies have already launched unmanned vehicle delivery services around the scenes of express delivery, malls, supermarkets and takeaways, and gradually formed a complete industrial chain.
Industry insiders believe that the implementation of autonomous driving technology in various application scenarios is closely related to the support of government policies and the help of capital.
According to incomplete statistics, a total of 39 financing events occurred in the global autonomous driving industry in 2020, with a financing scale of 43.162 billion yuan, an increase of 30.19 percent compared with 2019.
In January this year alone, about 14.4 billion yuan of financing in the industry were announced, and in June this year, four autonomous driving companies received a financing of more than 3.3 billion yuan.
In recent years, China has issued many policies to support the development of autonomous driving, and set up autonomous driving demonstration zones in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Wuhan, Changsha and other places, accelerating the commercialization of the technology while promoting related road testing.
By the end of 2020, 27 cities across China had issued policies supporting autonomous driving tests, and many of them had also set up closed test sites, said He Peng, a senior researcher on intelligent driving at Baidu.
(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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