Beijing Archives - Driverless Commute

The Driverless Commute: Emergence of L4 autonomous driving in China

Posted on August 2, 2019 By Henry Chen
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

The Chinese government is looking to develop the autonomous driving industry as a part of the country’s overall plan to reorient its economy towards a more high-tech industrial model that includes autonomous vehicles and related technology. In 2015, the State Council published a document entitled “Made in China 2025,” in which it detailed not only the reasoning behind this goal, but also the specific time frame in which they hope to achieve it. In this document, the State Council also names 10 specific industries in which the country plans to take the lead. Three of these industries—robotics, new-generation information technology and new-energy vehicles—point toward the autonomous vehicle industry.

The Driverless Commute: China issues first batch of L4-level automotive road-test driving licenses—all to Baidu

Posted on July 16, 2019 By Henry Chen
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles

On July 1, 2019, the Beijing Automotive Driving Test Management Joint-Committee issued the first batch of L4 Level Automobile Road-Test driving licenses. The batch contained five licenses and all were obtained by Baidu, making it the first, and the only, company in China to have received the L4 license. The L4 license certificate is China’s number one, open-road, test-level qualification certificate, with the highest technical level, highest standard and most difficult testing scenarios.

Receiving the L4 license means that one’s autonomous vehicle has the ability to complete automated driving in complicated metropolitan roads at a level much higher than required by the T3 license.

The Driverless Commute: If AVs take more risks now in early-phase deployment, will they be safer in the long-term?; big electrification news on both coasts; an electrified future for LA while Trump is open to spending on EV charging networks.

Posted on May 7, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and James Richardson
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

1. Humans can’t stop rear-ending slow-moving autonomous vehicles. But who’s to blame: the human, whose behavior mirrors norms if not law, or the paralyzed robot?

When autonomous vehicles have been involved in collisions, four years of data teach us that it’s almost always been the fault of a human driver. At least, that’s the black-and-white view generally held by law enforcement.

But autonomous vehicles are so strictly engineered to obey the rules of the road and to avoid statistically dangerous maneuvers that it begs the question whether this overly cautious approach to driving is inviting more chaos within the exiting mobility framework.

The Driverless Commute: Disengagement reports from China to California and lessons for AV sector in jet crashes

Posted on April 4, 2019 By Eric Tanenblatt and James Richardson
Categories: Autonomous Vehicles, Driverless Commute

1. Beijing just issued AV report cards. Here’s why you should use California’s instead.

China autonomous vehicles - Beijing AV report

Beijing transportation officials offered this week a first, if severely constrained, glimpse into the country’s autonomous vehicle industry, saying in a new report that eight licensed self-driving firms had logged more than 150,000 kilometers on public roads last year in the Chinese capital.

Ninety percent of that distance was managed by just one operator, search giant Baidu, which also leads the pack in number of test vehicles.

Reports on test driving stats for self-driving vehicles by various autonomous vehicle firms.

Notably absent from the government’s report are measures of disengagements, though a parallel report by a private think tank using voluntary data described 23 situations in which safety drivers were required to assume control of the cars.