Thanks to autonomous driving and vehicle-road collaboration, China's intelligent transportation will be commercialized on a large scale

Intelligent transportation is the key driving force for the mainland to expand the construction and investment of new infrastructure and accelerate the upgrading and development of the digital economy to the intelligent economy. On April 16, China Economic Times, the National Research Institute of Economics and Baidu jointly released the "Research on the Ecological Development Strategy of China's Intelligent Transportation Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report").

The full text of the report is 24,000 words, divided into five chapters: "Intelligent Transportation", "Intelligent Transportation Industry Ecology", "Building a Platform, Clarifying the Direction", "Serving the Present, Connecting the Future", and "Key Breakthroughs, Systematic Advancement", focusing on the overall significance of intelligent transportation to the economic and social development of the mainland, and giving suggestions for the development direction of China's intelligent transportation routes.

The report points out that in the global "intelligent revolution", transportation, as the basic and leading sector of the national economy, needs to be "one step ahead" to improve efficiency and effectiveness. At present, the mainland automobile manufacturing, integrated circuit industry chain is still in the late catch-up stage, the future to achieve a high level of scientific and technological self-reliance, industrial chain autonomy and controllability, intelligent transportation is close at hand, must seize the important commanding heights.

The report believes that the mainland's position as the world's largest automobile market has been further consolidated and is moving towards the world's automobile power. This also means that the mainland can use the advantages of the super-large-scale market to create a platform economy, use the platform to build a market, expand demand, use the market to attract technology, gather elements, and thus transform the international competitiveness of the entire industrial ecology.

The report suggests that in the construction of the mainland's intelligent transportation industry ecology, it is necessary to play a leading role in the autonomous driving technology platform enterprises. Support the development of leading intelligent transportation enterprises and technical systems in the mainland to "go global". Combining the mainland's super-large-scale market advantages, manufacturing industry system advantages, and intelligent transportation industry ecological integrity advantages constitute the comprehensive advantages of the mainland's intelligent transportation participation in international competition. Actively advocate the "global smart connection, China solution".

The report takes Baidu as an example to analyze that Baidu adheres to independent research and development, cooperative development, and joint construction of ecological parallel, industrial investment and financial investment at the same time, domestic and overseas layout go hand in hand, and actively absorb innovative elements and advanced concepts for the world. Through investment in LiDAR suppliers such as Velodyne LiDAR and Hesai Technology, as well as industrial ecological cooperation enterprises such as vision company Zhongke Huiyan and weima, a new force in car manufacturing, we will lead the establishment of an intelligent transportation industry chain. Through the Apollo Fund, we provide support for start-ups, small and micro enterprises in the Apollo ecosystem, and nurture and incubate advanced technologies. In 2017, Baidu also reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation with Huawei.

The report mentions that it is necessary to guide the public to form the concept of "automatic driving is not equal to absolute safety and zero accidents", and to carry out objective and fair reports and rational public opinion guidance for accidents that occur in automatic driving, emphasizing "looking at long-term performance and speaking with big data", rather than judging the safety attributes of a product, an enterprise and a set of technologies by case.

The report also suggests that, combined with the characteristics of an aging society, a special "self-driving vehicle self-driving license" system is set up for the elderly over the age of 60 without a motor vehicle driving license, allowing the elderly to take a high-level home autonomous vehicle after passing the necessary examinations and physical examinations.

The report predicts that thanks to 5G, autonomous driving, vehicle-road collaboration and other technologies, the mainland's intelligent transportation will enter a large-scale commercialization stage. By 2035, the mainland's intelligent transportation industry ecology will maintain the world's leading level. Among them, intelligent and connected new energy vehicles dominate automobile production and sales, high-level automatic driving services based on vehicle-road collaboration are basically popularized, and traffic congestion in large cities can be fundamentally alleviated.

On the day of the release of the report, more than ten experts from the Development Research Center of the State Council, the China Macroeconomic Research Institute, the National Intelligent Transportation System Engineering Technology Research Center, the Artificial Intelligence Development Research Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology and other institutions conducted special discussions. Baidu Apollo's autonomous driving and overall intelligent transportation solutions provide a wealth of practical examples for the report.

Yu Bin, a member of the party group and researcher of the Development Research Center of the State Council, pointed out that the mainland has many favorable conditions for accelerating the development of the intelligent transportation industry, the modern transportation infrastructure network is in a leading position, the research and development level of intelligent transportation-related technologies has also entered the world's first phalanx, and the super-large-scale market advantage has become an important support for the transportation power. The rapid development of intelligent transportation in the mainland is conducive to solving many problems in the traditional transportation field, especially playing an important role in ensuring traffic safety, alleviating urban congestion, promoting energy conservation and emission reduction, and achieving the "double carbon" goal. To build the mainland intelligent transportation industry ecology, the key is to do a good job in technological innovation and institutional innovation, do a good job in the combination of an effective market and a promising government, clarify the boundaries of rights and responsibilities between different subjects, and fully mobilize the enthusiasm of head enterprises and all aspects.

Wang Xiaojing, chief scientist of the National Intelligent Transportation System Engineering Technology Research Center, said that with the deep integration of cutting-edge technology and transportation, intelligent transportation has jumped onto a new fast track of development. This will provide strong support for the intelligentization of transportation infrastructure, the greening of transportation development models, the automation of traffic operations and the humanization of traffic travel, and bring great changes in production and lifestyle to society. The development of intelligent transportation should be coordinated with social and economic development, give full play to the role of enterprises as the main body, comprehensively consider the practicality of technology and commercialization benefits, and form a sustainable industrial ecology. The intelligent transportation practice of Baidu and other enterprises has achieved certain results, and it should be encouraged to try first.

Chen Shanzhi, deputy general manager and director of the expert committee of China Information and Communication Technology Group and director of the State Key Laboratory of Wireless Mobile Communications, said that intelligent transportation and smart city system construction need to be coordinated development. In the development of "dual smart" cities, digitalization, intelligence and networking have become important driving forces, and the realization of smart cities also depends on the layout of smart transportation infrastructure. China will embark on a development model of "intelligent networking and smart city" that is different from that of developed countries: through the practice of high-tech enterprises such as Baidu and China Xinke, we will step out of the "smart car + smart road + collaborative cloud" road-cloud collaborative development model, support the transformation of our automobile industry and smart city, and will cultivate new formats and new business models.

Zhang Hailin, chief architect of Baidu Intelligent Transportation, said that Baidu takes "the AI leader of a transportation power" as its own responsibility, relies on the advantages of the national strategy and institutional mechanism of intelligent transportation, practices the concept of "empowering the industry, increasing efficiency for the industry, and creating value for users", focuses on Baidu's independent and controllable technology highlights of "smart cars, smart roads, intelligent clouds, and high-precision maps", and proposes a number of intelligent network connections, smart traffic management, smart transportation, smart high-speed, smart education, smart cultural tourism, etc. with distinct industry attributes and deep understanding of business pain points. Solutions with strong market competitiveness and wide industry drive, as well as standardized products and customized services of "loose coupling, easy integration, scalability and wide empowerment", promote new technologies such as autonomous driving, vehicle-road collaboration, big data, high-precision maps, 5G, and digital twins, and integrate with the transportation industry, help the construction of digital transportation "14th Five-Year Plan", and serve the national transportation power strategy.