2021 is the first year of commercialization of self-driving cars, and it is also a year of cross-era. When driverless passenger cars actually enter our lives, I have no way of predicting what it will be called, which may be "self-driving car"; it may be "smart car"; or "driverless car". None of this matters! What matters is which country will eventually be the first L4 or L5 self-driving car to occupy the world auto market in large quantities.
Speaking of this, I can't help but think of the automobile history documentary "A Hundred Years of Automobiles" produced by Chinese director Chen Yi, when Germany (Volkswagen), the United States (Ford), Japan (Toyota) and other countries were not very high in the world's economic status, and they had a group of inventors and entrepreneurs who developed from simple small workshops to world-famous car brands. The hardships and bitterness of this can be imagined.
At the beginning, due to the mainland's unsupportive attitude towards the development of the automobile industry, it missed a good opportunity to develop cars independently. By the time the policy began to support later, there were already 70% or 80% of foreign cars on the road, which was a pity. Of course, although the rising stars of chery, Geely, Great Wall and other automobile brands in the mainland started relatively late, they still joined the cruel automobile competition, which is also a kind of spirit embodiment of daring to fight!
Therefore, if a country wants to not be economically backward, it still needs the branding, well-known and industrial chain of bulk commodities. Only in this way can the country's economy truly become one of the world's top powers. So when the policies of the countries we see now are synchronized with the upgrading of autonomous driving technology, I believe that the economies of these countries in the later period will certainly not lag too far behind the future world economic powers!
In the last issue, we talked about the legislation and regulations of the mainland and Germany on the travel of autonomous vehicles, and today we look at some of the policies of Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom on autonomous driving.
According to the China Auto Network: On December 25, 2021, the Japanese Police Agency (the department that manages the national police) said that it would submit amendments to Japan's Road Traffic Law to the Japanese Diet in early 2022, which proposed that L4 self-driving cars would be allowed on the road. If the amendment is passed, Japan could become the second country after Germany to allow L4 self-driving cars on the road.
Japan and Germany are at the forefront of global autonomous driving legislation, and only Japan has corresponding amendments to the road traffic law and the road transport vehicle law to regulate the two areas of road and vehicle law respectively. Japan's autonomous driving is still relatively pragmatic; in large part, it is to cope with the aging of the population. Japan has absorbed advanced foreign technologies in autonomous driving technology, and has also focused on deploying high-precision maps, safety evaluation, and enterprise collaboration in the country. For example, in high-precision maps: focus on accelerating updates, and reduce the cost of map improvement through international cooperation and automated cartography. In terms of safety evaluation, we will develop a series of driving scenarios that are in line with Japan's highway traffic environment, considering the driving scenarios of ordinary roads, and work with various countries to upgrade them to ISO international standards. In terms of corporate collaboration, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan provides funding projects that enable automakers and research institutions to collaborate on research methods, unify data collection, and harmonize standards.
In addition, Japan has formulated the key points of the "Safety Technical Guide for Automatic Driving Systems", which mainly plans the safety requirements that L3 and L4 self-driving cars need to meet, including the requirement that the car must be equipped with a data recording device ("black box"), and the Internet of Vehicles must have anti-hacker measures. It can be seen that Japan has taken the autonomous driving industry as a national technology development strategy plan to seize the commanding heights of the future autonomous driving industry.
According to South Korean media SBK related reports: South Korea will achieve fully autonomous vehicles in 2027. It will invest KRW 1.1 trillion (USD 999 million) in autonomous driving technology development and related infrastructure projects by 2027. It is used to develop autonomous driving computing technology and global autonomous driving standards to help link road transportation infrastructure with autonomous vehicles. In June 2021, about 370 organizations and 3,500 experts are expected to participate in the approved 53 self-driving projects with a budget of 85 billion won (US$75 million) to support the 2027 driverless car research and development program.
According to Reuters, the UK Transport Department pushed for autonomous driving legislation in 2021 and stepped up the development of relevant systems in response to the regulations approved by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe on ALKS, that is, to allow vehicles equipped with ALKS to operate on the road and ensure the correct use of the function. It is also planned to make the use of the DDAW system mandatory on all new vehicles by July 2022 (a system that can monitor drivers' drowsiness and visual attention levels and warn them when they are drowsy and distracted).
In addition, in April last year, Nuro and Domino's launched a pizza unmanned delivery service to cope with the surge in pizza orders during the epidemic. In December of the same year, Nuro and 7-Eleven convenience stores launched self-driving delivery services in California, and also launched autonomous delivery services with retail companies such as Walmart.
It can be seen that the commercial landing of autonomous driving is blossoming all over the world with the trend of sparks, and this time it may require the integration of technology and resources between countries to achieve the innovation of fully autonomous driving technology in a shorter and faster time. The author speculates that the fully automated autonomous vehicles from the delivery of goods to the settlement of cars carrying people may not be until 2025-2028.
The road to autonomous driving is long and obstructed, and the road is coming! This issue ends here, thank you for your attention, the next issue let's take a look at the self-driving car related brands since 2021.
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Edit: Ming Yang
Editor-in-charge: Ming Yang
Editor: Ming Yang
Typesetting: Ming Yang above part of the content and data refer to Reuters, SBK, China Auto Network and other information, in addition, the above pictures from the network public resources, can not identify its source, if there is a copyright dispute, please contact me.