Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
The author | Wooden rice
Edit the | Xiao Han
Today, the "two sessions" that the people of the whole country pay close attention to have officially opened, and people's congress deputies and CPPCC deputies from all over the country and all walks of life gathered in Beijing to discuss important economic and social issues.
During the "two sessions", automatic driving has once again become a hot topic. Baidu Chairman and CEO Li Yanhong, SAIC Group Party Secretary and Chairman Chen Hong, Guangzhou Automobile Group Chairman Zeng Qinghong, Changan Automobile Chairman Zhu Huarong and other representatives submitted relevant proposals.
Although the details of the deputies' proposals are different, proposals such as promoting industrial development through policy innovation and legal and regulatory innovation are almost mandatory for each autonomous driving proposal.
At present, China has formed a relatively complete road test management system for autonomous vehicles, and local governments have also successively explored the "Chinese model" of automatic driving. For example, Beijing opened the country's first pilot project for the commercialization of autonomous driving travel services; Shenzhen tried to explore local legislation in the fields of intelligent networked vehicle access management and accident liability identification; and Guangzhou launched a pilot project of mixed driving of intelligent connected vehicles and human-driven vehicles.
Looking at the world, the mainland government's support for the development of the autonomous driving industry is second only to the industry leader in the United States - in addition to the charging operation of the all-unmanned travel service without safety officers, other tests that can be done in the United States can be done in China.
However, due to the lack of a fully unmanned test operation system and the inability to complete the closed loop of the automatic driving industry, the development level of China's automatic driving industry is one level behind that of the United States, which limits the leapfrog development of technology and industry to a certain extent.
As Robin Li said when talking about the proposal, the current mainland autonomous driving has entered a critical period of landing, and the technology has run and even led the world, but the development of high-grade autonomous vehicles in the mainland is still facing many problems such as not being able to enter the market, not being able to be licensed, not being able to operate charges, and being difficult to determine the responsibility for accidents.
At this stage, the focus of competition in the unmanned autonomous driving of various countries is in terms of policy innovation. Which country can introduce more breakthrough innovation policies and take the lead in achieving large-scale commercial use, it can win the initiative in international competition.
In recent years, the central government has successively issued documents such as the "Intelligent Vehicle Innovation Development Strategy", "The Guiding Opinions of the Ministry of Transport on Promoting the Development and Application of Road Traffic Autonomous Driving Technology", and "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a Transportation Power Driven by Scientific and Technological Innovation", which clearly pointed out that it is necessary to vigorously develop automatic driving technology and promote the application of autonomous vehicles in various fields.
In order to achieve the ministry of transport, the ministry of industry and information technology and other central governments to make a high-level autonomous driving in 2025 in some scenarios to achieve the technical industrialization of the landing plan, and even to achieve the country's big goal of building a transportation power, the autonomous driving industry this year obviously needs to take a key step to promote unmanned commercialization (testing).
First, the United States: the policy started early, dare to break through the core difficulties
A brief comparison of the autonomous driving policies of the two countries can be found that the US policy system represented by California has an early start, a fast iteration speed, and the courage to break through three major characteristics.
Differences in autonomous driving policies between China and the United States
In 2009, Google opened the world's first civil autonomous driving technology research project in Mountain View, its headquarters in California, which led to a wave of research and development of autonomous driving technology in the United States and the world, and autonomous vehicles began to appear frequently on the streets of California.
In order to effectively regulate the safety of autonomous driving enterprises and vehicles, the California Vehicle Authority (DMV) has launched an autonomous driving test project in 2014, allowing companies to conduct autonomous driving tests on open roads in California, provided that there must be safety officers in the driver's seat to supervise the vehicle at all times and submit test data on time.
As the technology matures, the California DMV went one step further in April 2018 and September 2021, successively issuing fully driverless road testing and commercialization permits.
First, licensed companies are allowed to conduct road tests without safety officers, and then they are allowed to use Robotaxi to provide travel services and charge fees (enterprises decide whether to have safety officers at their own discretion).
Why California can liberalize unmanned, it is precisely in view of the fact that the California government has accumulated enough mileage data for autonomous driving enterprises in a long period of automatic driving testing, in response to the development needs of the industry, it immediately decided to establish and improve policies and regulations to protect and give enterprises the opportunity to open to the public.
California's self-driving test entry threshold is very high, for example, California from the communication link, vehicle monitoring, law enforcement officer interaction plan, vehicle safety standards, automatic driving system level description, autonomous driving system safety public assessment, remote driver training, personal information collection and disclosure and other situations to apply for fully unmanned autonomous driving test requirements.
It can be seen from California's application for the full unmanned autonomous driving test that the government encourages the development of enterprises and cautiously guides them, so as to ensure that enterprises that pass the California automatic driving license review standards have their own technology enough to cover most of the automatic driving scenarios and ensure the safety of actual vehicle operations.
The California Vehicle Authority has also made no effort in establishing regulatory requirements including 30-day service testing, disclosure of information to passengers, and submission of quarterly reports for re-inspections.
It is worth mentioning that the California Public Utilities Commission has also added passenger safety programs for all-unmanned commercial operations, which includes how to minimize the safety risks of passengers riding in vehicles; prevent and respond to attacks and harassment; and educate and guide passengers to understand technology, experience and safety procedures. It can be said that California's liberalization of the commercial operation of unmanned vehicles is based on a multi-layered security mechanism.
Although the testing and commercial operation of autonomous driving in other states in the United States is not as comprehensive as that of California, it is also worth learning from in terms of openness.
Nevada first introduced regulations on road testing of self-driving cars in 2011. Others such as Texas, Minnesota, pennsylvania, etc. have also opened up autonomous driving tests in 2018 and around 2019, and allowed fully unmanned autonomous driving tests without safety officers.
In terms of commercial operations, New York State passed a bill in 2019 that allows businesses to operate commercially on highways, and businesses can decide for themselves whether to be equipped with unmanned vehicle safety officers.
Last June, Intel-owned self-driving company Mobileye received New York State's first public road self-driving test license, and the state's self-driving test area is expanding.
In January this year, Pennsylvania also began to allow the commercial operation of unmanned vehicles in the highway scene, and there is no mandatory regulation for unmanned vehicle safety officers.
For example, Florida and Arizona have given companies a more relaxed policy on the commercialization of driverless cars. Florida allowed driverless cars to be commercialized in 2019, allowing companies to decide whether to bring security officers, while driverless cars are essentially governed by the same traffic laws as human drivers. Arizona passed a bill last March that would allow companies and individuals to apply and pass local audits to conduct autonomous driving testing and commercial operations on public roads.
It can be seen from the policy changes that the regulatory authorities in the United States have responded quickly, can introduce new policies in a timely manner to support the development of the industry, and dare to break through the core issues - first, commercial deployment, and second, take down security officers.
It can be said that it is precisely because of this policy environment that encourages innovation and dares to break through that the United States has become a fertile ground for cultivating autonomous driving technology and promoting unmanned humanization to commercialization. It is precisely under the escort of policies that this is also an important reason why most of the world's outstanding autonomous driving companies, including Chinese companies, have carried out autonomous driving tests in California and other places in the United States.
Second, China: The speed of development is fast, and it is only one step away from the United States
Mainland autonomous driving management policies are mainly led by first-tier cities, among which Beijing's regulatory policies are the most sound, which is the benchmark for the development of domestic automatic driving and represents the highest level of governance of the domestic autonomous driving industry.
In March 2018, after a series of rigorous assessments, Beijing issued baidu with the first batch of five autonomous driving test licenses, which is the first administrative regulation in China to allow automatic driving testing on public roads, creating a new breakthrough in the development of automatic driving.
In November 2020, Beijing issued a revised version of the road test management regulations, allowing enterprises to carry out unmanned road testing, expanding safety officers into traditional driver's seat safety officers, other seat safety officers in the car, and remote safety officers. According to the "Beijing Autonomous Vehicle Road Test Report (2021)", the total open road test mileage is 75,933 kilometers, and the source rate of the command source of the main driving other driving positions in the car is 0, that is, the vehicle actually has the ability to ensure its own safe driving.
Based on a series of practical scientific data, in October and November 2021, Beijing issued unmanned road test permits and commercialization permits for autonomous driving services. The former allows the transfer of safety officers from the main driver to the co-pilot position of road test vehicles, while the latter allows companies to provide travel services to the public and charge a fee for autonomous vehicles with safety officers.
It can be seen that although the domestic autonomous driving management policy started late (the first formal management regulations were only in 2017), the development speed is faster - it takes only 4 years to reach the most cutting-edge commercialization step.
However, from a worldwide perspective, due to the reasons of higher-level laws such as the Road Crossing Law, the relevant management regulations on the mainland are conservative in implementation. For example, unmanned road testing still retains the safety officer in the co-pilot position, and commercial operation testing needs to retain a more traditional main driver safety officer.
Under the leadership of the Chinese and US governments, the autonomous driving industry has entered the operation landing stage in the second half from the technical verification stage in the first half, competing for product creation and scale expansion capabilities.
Taking the Robotaxi circuit as an example, to create a perfect unmanned travel service product, it is necessary to invest in commercial operation and completely remove the safety officer.
In the first half, the mainland overtook other countries, second only to the United States. In order to maintain an advantage or even surpass the United States in the second half, in addition to the company's own efforts, it is also necessary to establish a sandbox system in conditional areas in the policy, allowing key breakthroughs in the policy and regulatory system, that is, the simultaneous realization of unmanned + commercial test permits, so that vehicles without security officers can provide paid travel services on the road.
Only under the guarantee of the safety system, 100% of the autonomous vehicles become driverless cars and put into the actual urban operation system, enterprises can find the hidden Corner Case, solve the long-tail problem, and polish the real unmanned vehicle travel service.
Third, the domestic Robotaxi more than a thousand sets of technical level is close to the head player
The primary premise for the breakthrough of the policy and regulatory system is, of course, that the technology must be broken first. In this regard, mainland enterprises can be described as infinitely approaching US rivals, and have also achieved overtaking in the field of segmentation.
Take the California full driverless test license, in addition to 1 Nuro that does low-speed cars, there are 6 companies, namely Baidu Apollo, AutoX, General Cruise, Google Waymo, Wenyuan Zhixing, ZOOX.
In terms of data, Chinese and American companies account for half of each, and if you add to the recent suspension of unmanned testing, Chinese companies actually surpass American companies.
From the autonomous driving off-the-road (MPD) data released by the California DMV, it is also possible to roughly see the capabilities of each company's autonomous driving technology.
Among the top 10 players, China and the United States are still equally divided, and the top five Chinese companies occupy 3 seats. And among the top 10 players, Chinese companies will at least have vehicles traveling an average of more than 10,000 miles before they will have automatic driving disengagement.
Since 2019, Baidu and other companies have actively embraced policy changes and began to deploy pilot services for autonomous driving with safety officers in many places in China, and opened them to the public experience. For more than 2 years, there has been no news of a serious accident in a vehicle.
Baidu's fifth-generation unmanned vehicle
As the technology matures, the test scenarios of various companies have also shifted from simple to complex.
Looking at the road test videos released by enterprises and the actual experience of car things, China's autonomous driving companies have gradually overcome complex scenarios such as heavy rain, snow, night, urban villages, and downtown areas, and are ready to face the upcoming opening trend.
It is the collective efforts of China's autonomous driving enterprises that have become an important support for more cities to take a key step towards autonomous driving technology.
More and more regions have landed autonomous driving service pilots, involving Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Changsha, Cangzhou, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Hefei, Wuhan, Chengdu, Yangquan and other more than a dozen cities, involving nearly 1,000 vehicles.
With the complementarity of policies and technologies, the drivable area and scope of autonomous vehicles are increasing, the scale of service fleets is expanding, and more unmanned vehicles are put into actual commercial operation, providing the public with intelligent, safe and convenient driverless travel services, and providing more detailed data samples for the government and enterprises, laying a solid foundation for the commercialization of unmanned vehicles.
Fourth, the supporting system is perfect, and the safety problems can be prevented and controlled
At present, the reason why localities and governments at all levels have not allowed completely unmanned vehicles to carry out charged operations, the biggest concern is actually in terms of safety.
Over the years, the technical system accumulated by the mainland autonomous driving industry and the management system explored by local governments have been enough to escort the commercial test of Robotaxi's all-unmanned vehicles.
But from a technical point of view, while no enterprise's technology is currently 100% secure, that doesn't mean robotaxi without security officers is completely unable to commercialize testing.
After the technology reaches a certain maturity level (such as 99.9%), if there are other technologies or management systems to assist, so that intelligent data can be traced, driving risks can be prevented and controlled, and it is not inevitable that the policy will open Robotaxi to all unmanned vehicles on the road to try commercial operation.
The development of the technical level is ready, and the leading companies in autonomous driving such as Baidu have come up with 5G cloud driving solutions. Relying on the characteristics of 5G communication with low latency and large bandwidth, in the early stage of the commercialization test of all unmanned vehicles, remote real-time services are provided in the form of cloud driving to ensure smooth user services.
5G cloud generation cockpit
When the vehicle encounters a special scenario that is difficult to deal with (such as road construction, which can only be passed in violation of traffic rules), the cloud driver sends a path or remote driving to get out of trouble, improving the effectiveness of automatic driving services.
In terms of supervision, Beijing, Shanghai and other areas with rapid development of the autonomous driving industry have formed a four-stage autonomous driving road test risk prevention and control management system composed of closed test grounds, specific open roads, limited test areas and small-scale commercial operation and deployment, which is composed of factors such as licenses, test areas, and test results.
Enterprises hold specific licenses to carry out specific tests, and applying for licenses also needs to carry out pre-technical safety tests, so even if the commercial test license for all unmanned taxis is released, it will not cause all enterprises to rush to the top and mix the chaos of the fish and dragons - the technology is not passed, and the enterprises that have unsatisfactory results in the test stage of the safety officer will not get the commercial test license of the all-unmanned taxi.
In this favorable context, China's autonomous driving industry obviously needs to be more open and supported in terms of policies, especially the commercialization test pilot of open unmanned travel services, so that leading enterprises with excellent technology can test technology, polish technology, and ultimately improve technology in a solid business environment, so that driverless technology can truly enter daily life.
Fifth, the deployment of real unmanned travel services brings multi-party social value
Summarizing the full text, with the strong support of national policies, autonomous driving technology, as the core intersection of multiple frontier fields such as smart transportation, new infrastructure, intelligent networked vehicles, and smart cities, is an important area to seize the future industrial highland. Not only is the US government vigorously supporting its own industries, but also developed countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea have also introduced a series of relevant policies to keep up with the times.
Under such a development momentum, mainland autonomous driving companies have technically approached the American competitors represented by Google Waymo and General Cruise, and even took a step ahead in segments such as the size of autonomous driving test fleets and the progress of commercialization.
At the same time, with the mainland's dominant 5G cloud driving, vehicle-road collaboration technology system and perfect regulatory system as the support, coupled with the active layout of large Internet companies such as Baidu in automatic driving technology, China has not only gained a first-mover advantage in the autonomous driving track second only to the United States, but also cultivated a large number of excellent autonomous driving start-ups, becoming the only country in the world that can keep pace with the United States.
Openness is the only way to technological development, the achievements of the mainland's intelligent development have been revealed in all aspects, the current is based on internal and external favorable factors to create a leading edge of the excellent window period, in order to improve the safety factor of unmanned vehicle driving, to create a safe driving environment, build a solid development of safety defense line under the premise of multiple measures, the government and enterprises need to take advantage of the momentum, open a new chapter in the high-quality development of the automatic driving industry.
From the perspective of the benefits of the whole society, China's success and victory in the field of autonomous driving will effectively improve traffic safety and travel efficiency, which is in line with the overall development plan and strategy of the national transportation field. At the same time, it can also drive a series of supporting industries such as chips, sensors, vehicle manufacturing, AI algorithms, and vehicle-road collaboration, which not only stimulates economic growth, but also promotes the upgrading of industrial structure and helps to achieve the goal of double carbon.