Autonomous driving technology is taking another big step forward on the road to replacing human driving.
Not long ago, the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (hereinafter referred to as NHTSA) launched the final version of the "Driverless Car Passenger Protection Regulations", the most eye-catching rule is that fully autonomous vehicles no longer need to be equipped with steering wheels.
The introduction of this new regulation completely subverts the traditional thinking that cars must be equipped with a steering wheel in the past, and also indicates that there will be cars without steering wheels in the future. Judging from the results, this is indeed a groundbreaking step, and its significance for the future is equivalent to replacing the physical keyboard with touch in the mobile phone.
A historic step
The new rule that "allows self-driving cars to no longer have to be equipped with a steering wheel" has been called a "historic step" by the US Department of Transportation and the media, not to sensationalize, but its significance is really very significant, not only establishing the future development direction of the automotive industry, but also showing the world a core point of competition in the field of technology.
Although the United States today is no longer as brilliant in many ways as it used to be, it has to be admitted that the status of the United States in the field of science and technology is still the undisputed global first, and the trend of the United States in the technology industry determines the development direction of the global technology industry.
The new regulations introduced by the United States are also the first time that autonomous driving technology has been legally recognized at the superpower level. The new rules suggest that autonomous driving is no longer just a driver assistance software for smart cars, but a machine driver on an equal footing with a human driver, with responsibility for causing the accident being equated.
At the same time, the promulgation of this new regulation also means that the United States has confirmed that autonomous driving will one day completely replace artificial driving. As mentioned earlier, due to the influence of the United States in the field of science and technology, it is believed that in the near future, the automotive supply chain will also make corresponding changes according to the views of the United States, and eventually accelerate the process of automatic driving to replace artificial driving.
Secondly, the introduction of the new regulations is also announced by the United States to the world, which will be their focus on the development of science and technology in the future, after all, the new regulations and other content can already be said to indicate a trend - the United States has cleared the policy obstacles to the development of autonomous driving technology.
With The rapid progress of China in the field of science and technology in recent years, and the establishment of the goal of overtaking the European and American powers in the era of pure electric vehicles, China has become an opponent that the United States cannot ignore in the field of science and technology, and from the situation of Chinese high-tech companies such as Huawei and DJI, it can be seen that the United States is very concerned about the development of Chinese science and technology.
Therefore, for the self-driving technology, which is known as the crown jewel of the smart car era, the United States naturally wants to use all resources and opportunities to continue its dominance in the technology industry, in other words, the new regulations are also the first time that the United States has pointed out to the world, which will be their key concern in the field of science and technology.
In fact, the launch of the final version of the "Driverless Car Passenger Protection Regulations" also marks that the autonomous driving industry will be standardized, and safety will be the core theme of the next improvement of the industry.
With the continuous improvement of autonomous driving technology, the automotive safety assessment standards originally set for manual driving are no longer applicable. As a result, although the new regulations are very bold to allow cars to carry no steering wheel, they also put forward new standards for the safety assessment of autonomous vehicles, and various new safety test contents provide a more sound occupant safety test program for driverless cars in the era of automatic driving.
As the U.S. Secretary of Transportation put it, "It will be important for the U.S. Department of Transportation over the next decade to ensure that automotive safety standards are synchronized with the development of autonomous driving and driver assistance systems." Therefore, the introduction of the new regulations is bound to make practitioners who originally only considered the level of autonomous driving technology greatly improve their awareness of technical safety, prompting the entire industry to put autonomous driving capabilities and safety levels at the same level.
In addition, although the new regulations generously allow cars without steering wheels, the majority of car companies will not directly put cars without steering wheels into the market for a while and a half, after all, everything is still developing, so this also forces car companies to take the initiative to require partners or their own autonomous driving departments to work hard to improve functional safety and promote rapid iteration from a technical point of view, so fundamentally solve safety concerns.
There are two roads between China and the United States
Dozens of hours after the announcement of the new U.S. regulations, China also broke the news that the self-driving industry was very favorable: mainland regulators will issue green cards for driverless vehicles, which means that on China's roads, driverless cars will also get the same right of way as other cars, becoming traffic participants in open roads.
Is the mainland doing this to accelerate the development of the autonomous driving industry like the United States? The answer, of course, is yes.
In the context of the lack of main highlights in the global technology industry today, although many enterprises in the mainland have extraordinary achievements in the field of automatic driving, there is still great uncertainty about public safety due to automatic driving technology. Therefore, the attitude of the mainland government to autonomous driving technology has directly dominated the rise and fall of the industry.
When the news came out that the Chinese regulatory authorities had given the green light for this, the market suddenly took a reassurance pill - the government is supporting the development of the autonomous driving industry.
The confidence of industrial development has been boosted, and the companies in the industry can also free their hands and feet, which also sends a very clear signal to the investment institutions that there is a great return to investing in the autonomous driving industry.
Not only that, but it can also be understood that the mainland government has openly stood for the autonomous driving industry, conveying the advanced nature of autonomous driving technology to the public with unlimited credibility, improving public acceptance of the technology, and paving the way for the commercialization of autonomous driving technology.
That being the case, which commercialization project based on autonomous driving technology will take the lead in eating this policy dividend?
The Robotaxi field, which has been on the cusp of public opinion, may be the biggest beneficiary of this policy. Since 2016, the industry has welcomed one challenger after another, and has also sent away batch after batch of losers, and over the years, the commercialization exploration in this field has been stumbling.
Because of this, the outside world has never stopped criticizing and questioning Robotaxi.
Su Zhen, the former chief architect of Huawei's automotive BU, has expressed a negative statement in public activities: Killing will not do Robotaxi, and every company that is doing it at this stage will be doomed.
However, as long as we have studied the Robotaxi industry in depth, we can clearly understand that the failure of many related startups in recent years has little to do with whether they are suitable for commercialization or not. As of now, Robotaxi's problems are mainly policy issues, as long as the policy obstacles can be removed, its commercialization road will become a smooth and bright road.
Taking radish run, which was born from Baidu's Apollo project as an example, since the radish run was officially released in 2021, radish run has created extraordinary performance by directly cooperating with the local government and obtaining policy support as much as possible.
In March this year, Baidu revealed in its financial report that Radish Run alone received 213,000 manned orders in the fourth quarter of last year alone; JPMorgan Chase also predicted that Radish Run would achieve bicycle profitability in 2025.
It can be seen that once the mainland officially opens the green card application for self-driving cars, then the Robotaxi market will certainly be able to achieve explosive growth, and it will only take a short time to quickly roll out in the domestic taxi market, when not only robotaxi market service providers can enjoy policy dividends, but also the mainland's autonomous driving technology industry can also use the data collected in Robotaxi operations to rely on more actual data for machine training. Finally, the mainland's autonomous driving technology can achieve high-speed and uninterrupted iteration.
summary
Overall, the final version of the U.S. Department of Transportation's "Driverless Car Passenger Protection Regulations" is indeed a "historic step" for the autonomous driving industry and the automotive industry. As the biggest competitor of the United States in this era, China naturally plays with its own pace, and the news of issuing a green card for driverless cars also shows that China will focus on investing in and developing the autonomous driving industry.
China and the United States in the field of automatic driving you to catch up, fully reflects the two will to compete for the leadership of the next era of science and technology, for industrial development, this kind of benign competition is actually extremely beneficial, not only forced the industry to take the initiative to improve safety, but also accelerate the landing and advancement of commercial projects.
The image comes from the Internet