This is the first time in China that Robotaxi services and ordinary taxi operation services have been given equal status from the policy level.
Author | Rob
Edited by | Wenliang
One of the most important commercialization progress in the domestic autonomous driving industry in the past two days comes from Xiaoma Zhixing:
On April 24, Xiaoma Zhixing announced that it had won the bid for the 2022 taxi capacity index in Nansha District, Guangzhou.
This is the first autonomous driving enterprise to appear in the vehicle operation platform that has obtained a taxi operation license in China.
According to industry insiders, for ordinary taxi operations, qualified companies can apply for licenses in accordance with national and local regulations, but previously only for ordinary vehicles that meet technical regulations, and cannot be allowed to be modified in violation of regulations.
The most special industry significance of Xiaoma Zhixing's acquisition of the rental business license this time is that it clearly stipulates that autonomous vehicles that meet technical standards can be put into the travel market as operating vehicles. None of the previous permits have been explicitly issued for autonomous vehicles.
In addition, this is also the operation of the domestic Robotaxi, the first time to jump out of the past test management system, was officially included in the scope of transportation operation and management of general vehicles, in accordance with the national unified taxi specifications management.
That is to say, whether from the perspective of the operation platform, or from the perspective of the main body of the vehicle, or from the perspective of the charging standard, this time Robotaxi will stand at a common starting point and compete fairly with the ordinary taxis on the social road.
Get rid of the test car identity and put 100 Robotaxi vehicles into the market
Let's take a look at the bidding start of this pony zhixing.
Because the part of the taxi capacity index legally operated in Nansha District of Guangzhou has expired, on March 16 this year, the Transportation Bureau of Nansha District of Guangzhou Issued a bidding announcement, planning to re-launch 100 taxi capacity indicators for a period of 5 years and only one target.
On April 15, Xiaoma Zhixing beat traditional taxi passenger transport companies such as Guangzhou Nansha Transportation Development Co., Ltd. with a comprehensive score of 85.67 points, becoming the first candidate for the tender project.
Since then, Xiaoma Zhixing has become the first company in China to be commercialized In Beijing and Guangzhou, and the taxi operation license issued this time has also become the first road transport business license issued under the pilot policy of intelligent and connected vehicle mixed driving in Guangzhou.
In the notice of winning the bid, the license for the operation of autonomous vehicle taxis was also explicitly granted.
This means that this is the first time in China that autonomous vehicle operation services and ordinary vehicle operation services have been given equal status from the policy level.
Never before has it been so clear.
According to Mo Luyi, vice president of Xiaoma Zhixing and head of the Guangshen R&D Center, in the bidding process, they mainly faced two parts of the test:
First, its autonomous vehicles need to pass the Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Safety Technical Standards, carry out vehicle and parts tests according to the national standard, and second, assess the operation and management process of Xiaoma Zhixing for vehicles with the requirements of general taxi operators.
According to the introduction, the Guangzhou Intelligent Connected Vehicle Safety Technical Standards contain a number of national mandatory standards and recommended standards for the automotive industry, and the vehicles that have passed the test are equipped with Pony Alpha X, the automatic driving software and hardware system of Xiaoma Zhixing.
Pony Zhixing said that thanks to the complete set of standardized system design and production process represented by Pony Alpha X, all vehicles meet high consistency and stability, and take the lead in passing the test with high standards.
For example, in the batch of self-driving vehicles that have passed the test, in order to cope with the extreme weather of heavy rain in Guangzhou, it is necessary to pass the vehicle rain test to meet the vehicle rain requirements of the automotive industry standard QC/T 476 "Bus Rainproof Sealing Limit and Test Method".
Of course, before being put into service, these vehicles need to go through the technical standards of intelligent and connected vehicles in Guangzhou, which can also be seen that there is an essential difference between this and the online ride-hailing license previously issued to Internet companies or taxi operators.
After winning the bid, according to the plan, from May, PonyPilot+, the self-driving travel service of Xiaoma Zhixing, will be mixed with other ordinary taxis, and the 803 square kilometers of the entire Nansha New Area will start charging operations, with the charging standards referring to the unified pricing standards of taxis in Guangzhou, with a starting price of 12 yuan for the first 3 kilometers.
During the operation period, PonyPilot+ will launch corresponding preferential activities, and can also issue electronic invoices to support Alipay and WeChat payment in its APP.
In fact, as early as the end of November 2021, Xiaoma Zhixing had already tried the Robotaxi commercial fee pilot service in Beijing.
Another difference in the charging operation of Xiaoma Zhixing in Guangzhou this time is that the operation license of this batch of autonomous vehicles has jumped out of the test scope of ordinary autonomous vehicles in Guangzhou for the first time, and has been issued a taxi operation license directly as a general operating vehicle.
According to the "Guiding Opinions on Printing and Distributing Road Testing related to Intelligent and Connected Vehicles" previously issued by Guangzhou, autonomous vehicles must meet a series of test application conditions before they are on the road.
For example, in the closed test site recognized by the municipal competent department, the vehicle must have carried out no less than the specified mileage and the specified scene and be evaluated to be qualified, or the vehicle that applies for the test for the first time can only carry out test work in the first-level road section.
"Last year, we obtained a commercial fee pilot license in Beijing, which is within the scope of test vehicles, and this taxi operation license is beyond the scope of ordinary test vehicles." Mo Luyi said.
That is to say, the batch of autonomous vehicles that Xiaoma Zhixing will put into operation in Nansha, Guangzhou, did not go through the road test stage, but after passing a series of assessments, it can be directly operated and charged.
It is expected that the initial revenue will reach one million yuan / year, and other travel platforms will be added
"In the process of participating in this public bidding, we can more clearly understand which indicators are very important for the quality and stability of the entire robotaxi commercial operation."
Wang Haojun, chief operating officer of Xiaoma Zhixing and head of the Shanghai R&D Center, believes that although the entire Robotaxi industry is still in the early stages of commercialization, the consensus of the industry is that the large-scale deployment of Robotaxi nationwide will arrive in about three or five years.
According to Mo Luyi's estimates, with the operation of these 100 autonomous vehicles in Guangzhou, it is expected to generate millions of yuan / year in revenue in the early stage.
"With the further expansion of the scale of autonomous mobility services and the further improvement of technology, the growth rate of revenue scale in the next few years is very impressive."
As of mid-April this year, the PonyPilot+ service has served more than 700,000 orders.
However, at present, the Robotaxi service of Xiaoma Zhixing does not support yangzhao taxis, but fixes the getting on and off points, selects the taxi points, and still has safety personnel in the car.
In this regard, in order to improve the user experience, according to the previous experience of charging operations in Robotaxi in Beijing, next, Xiaoma Zhixing plans to strengthen the logo of the pick-up point and open more fixed sites.
Overall, there are currently three commercial operation models for Robotaxi in China: one is the establishment of joint ventures between autonomous driving companies and investment institutions, local governments, etc.; the second is to cooperate with travel service companies, taxi companies provide venues and operation service platforms, and automatic driving companies as technology providers; third, autonomous driving companies establish fleets and platforms, and are responsible for operations independently, such as Xiaoma Zhixing.
Different models have their own advantages, such as autonomous operation to facilitate the circulation and unified management of vehicle data, and also conducive to the rapid upgrading and iteration of automatic driving algorithms.
However, according to Mo Luyi, in addition to his own APP platform, Xiaoma Zhixing's Robotaxi service will also be connected to other travel platforms.
"We chose the two-line parallel approach, hoping that in different models, Xiaoma Zhixing can accumulate enough experience to prepare for large-scale commercial deployment in the future."
In addition, the high cost of bicycles is also an important factor hindering the further mass production of Robotaxi.
To this end, in January this year, Xiaoma Zhixing released the sixth generation of software and hardware system solutions for mass production of autonomous driving, including the external design of software and hardware systems, sensors and computing platforms.
According to reports, the system is designed for mass production of L4 vehicle specifications, and the first model equipped with the system is Toyota S-AM (a hybrid electric platform based on 7-seat Xena), which will open road tests in China this year and will be put into the daily operation of autonomous driving services (Robotaxi) in the first half of 2023.
Wang Haojun believes that the new generation of systems can reduce overall costs and improve vehicle performance and reliability.
We are happy to see more players join, and the problem of one city and one policy needs to be solved
In addition to Xiaoma Zhixing, at present, the autonomous driving companies at home and abroad that have obtained Robotaxi's fee operating license include Waymo, Cruise, Baidu Radish Run, etc.
In addition, Wenyuan Zhixing formed a joint venture company "Wenyuan Yuexing" with Baiyun Taxi Group in 2018, which operates Robotaxi services, and Wenyuan Yuexing Robotaxi's fee-based services began as early as November 2019.
At the same time, Xiaopeng Automobile also established Guangzhou Pengxu Autonomous Driving Technology Co., Ltd. in February this year.
He Xiaopeng, CEO of Xiaopeng Motors, has publicly stated that Xiaopeng Motors will carry out Robotaxi business in 2022 to accelerate the commercialization of Xiaopeng's intelligent driving technology.
Robotaxi track, domestic new and old players are gradually increasing, the next competition will be intensified.
In this regard, Wang Haojun believes that the addition of more players has a very positive significance for the entire autonomous driving industry, because this can promote the faster development of the industrial chain, and can also make the hardware cost and hardware performance rapidly decline and greatly improve, "We welcome the entire ecosystem to work together to promote the large-scale commercial deployment of autonomous driving technology."
This trend, from the rapid increase in the computing power of the car-level computing chip in recent years and the sharp decline in the cost of lidar, can actually be clearly seen, so that the Robotaxi players have the confidence to quickly iterate their autonomous driving solutions.
However, in order to further reduce the cost of Robotaxi, the most important part is to achieve "going to people", that is, to put manpower from the entire process of providing travel services, from the inside of the car to the outside of the car, and at the same time, the remote safety officer or system is responsible for the normal operation of a large number of autonomous vehicles.
This is also the most obvious advantage of Robotaxi compared to traditional ride-hailing.
As early as mid-2021, Xiaoma Zhixing launched a batch of fully unmanned vehicles in areas with perfect transportation facilities such as Jiaomen River, Pearl Bay, Nansha Bay, and Qingsheng Hub in Nansha District, Guangzhou, and the driving seat was no longer equipped with safety personnel.
As of press time, Xiaoma Zhixing has accumulated nearly 200,000 kilometers of fully unmanned autonomous driving research and development mileage, and has provided nearly 1,000 unmanned autonomous driving experience services.
In addition, at present, Xiaoma Zhixing has also obtained the first number of autonomous driving test licenses in Guangzhou, covering all test levels.
According to the statistics of the three-party real-time data supervision of intelligent and connected vehicles in Guangzhou, by the end of 2021, xiaoma Zhixing has carried out the first test mileage in Guangzhou, contributing more than half of the test mileage of automatic driving in Guangzhou. Among them, the automatic driving mode accounted for 98% of the test mileage accumulated by Xiaoma Zhixing, exceeding the industry average by 70.6%.
Mo Luyi believes that with the further opening of the policy, Xiaoma Zhixing will add autonomous vehicles without safety officers to the fleet of commercial operations in due course.
However, looking at the current domestic autonomous driving industry policy as a whole, due to the different degrees of attention and understanding of the development of automatic driving in different places, there are different standards and requirements in various places, showing the characteristics of "one city, one policy".
Therefore, in terms of policy breakthroughs, Xiaoma Zhixing has been actively communicating with local governments and hopes to jointly formulate relevant standards and requirements.
For example, in March 2021, the Supervision and Judicial Working Committee of the Standing Committee of the Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress organized the drafting of the "Regulations on the Administration of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (Draft for Comment)", which should be the first policy legislation on automatic driving in China, and Xiaoma Zhixing also participated in the research.
Wang Haojun predicts that with the development of the industry, there will be new policies promulgated at the level of autonomous driving industry policy design at the entire national level.
END
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