Autopilot industry is speeding up worldwide, with significantly relaxed regulations in foreign countries.

On April 28th, Beijing’s Intelligent Connected Vehicle (ICV) Policy Pilot Zone officially released its “License for Autonomous Testing of Passenger Vehicles,” with Baidu becoming the first domestic enterprise to be granted permission. It is reported that Baidu’s robotaxi platform, “Luobo Kuaipao,” will conduct public road tests for autonomous passenger transportation within a range of 60 square kilometers in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. According to reports, the operation hours for autonomous ride-hailing services will be from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Baidu will initially put 10 driverless vehicles into operation, with plans to add 30 more vehicles in the future.

Beijing has taken the lead in relaxing policies on autonomous driving, which will have an extraordinary impact on the industry. The Robotaxi platform represented by Luobo Kuaipao has been operating in various parts of the country for some time, and related companies have accumulated mature technologies and operational experience.

At present, both technology and operational experience accumulation have been more than plentiful, making it necessary to have supportive policy and regulations. This opening up may accelerate the formulation of related policies and regulations.

Humans are the biggest safety hazard

The “License for Autonomous Testing of Passenger Vehicles” does not completely remove the safety officer from the vehicle, only that there is “no one behind the steering wheel,” and the safety officer will still sit in the passenger seat.

As we all know, safety is essential in the automotive industry, which is why on April 28, shortly after Baidu obtained its testing license, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Baidu, Robin Li, mentioned safety issues in a post on his social media platform. From the screenshot of the article about the permit that he shared, he wrote: “Autonomous driving will definitely have accidents, even fatal ones, but the probability is much lower than that of human driving.”

Autonomous driving is not 100% safe; however, perhaps it is not as dangerous as the general public believes. According to the “White Paper on Autonomous Vehicle Traffic Safety” jointly issued by China Automotive Technology Research Center and other industry organizations on December 16th last year, people are the most uncertain factor in traffic safety.

More detailed data is available from the CIDAS (China In-Depth Accident Study) database.

The data shows that out of 5,664 cases of accidents involving passenger cars in the past ten years, human factors were responsible for 81.5% of them. Among them, the proportion of subjective errors caused by drivers due to their inability to identify and perceive risks in advance accounted for 79.9% of accidents. The proportions of accidents caused by failure to comply with regulations, over-speeding, improper use of lanes, drunk driving, violation of traffic signals, and fatigue driving, followed.Judgments can only be made based on existing experience, but everyone’s driving time and scenarios are different, and driving skills vary greatly, making people the biggest variable in traffic safety.

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Zhongguancun Chair Professor of Tsinghua University, and President of the Intelligent Industry Research Institute, Zhang Yaqin, stated in an interview that “based on the industry’s general consensus, the safety requirements for autonomous driving must be at least one order of magnitude higher than human driving, reaching a level of 99.99999%. And to achieve such a safety goal, we need deep learning, V2X communication, and these two directional technologies as support. “

Through continuous feeding of data and the evolution of AI itself through databases, coupled with hardware such as V2X communication that is continuously iterating, autonomous driving will be a tool to solve the uncertain factor of “human”. Zhang Yaqin reiterated in Li Yanhong’s circle of friends that the accident probability of autonomous driving “must be at least one order lower.”

Technology is advancing while policies are lagging behind.

China’s autonomous driving started relatively late, even Baidu, the oldest player, has only been doing autonomous driving for 9 years.

In 2015, Baidu established its autonomous driving business unit. At that time in the United States, a blind man was sitting in a fully electric autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, brakes, or accelerator that was driving through Austin, which was a new product from Google.

Two years later, Waymo’s actual road test has already reached 1,368 kilometers. Even more terrifyingly, the team imported the actual road test results into the simulation environment so that the autonomous driving system could continue to practice in software. On the other hand, Li Yanhong received the industry’s first traffic ticket while sitting in an unmanned car on the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing. Passenger and cargo testing for Beijing was not open until the end of 2019.

Now, with Baidu, Didi, Pony.ai, WeRide, and other companies continuing to invest heavily in this field for several years, some companies have moved from start-up to maturity. China has even surpassed the United States in many ways, one of which is “increasing quantity without increasing cost”.

Taking the fifth-generation Robotaxi as an example, through further integrated design, and greatly improved stability, Baidu has compressed costs to 480,000 yuan, about one-third of Waymo’s costs. PhotonPlanet has learned that the next generation of Robotaxi will also be released this year.

Moreover, it is well known that due to differences in population density and urban planning, domestic autonomous driving companies face more severe challenges than their foreign counterparts. If Waymo’s testing environment is of ordinary difficulty, Apollo has been testing under extremely difficult conditions for a long period of time, and it is valuable that it has maintained a 0 accident rate. Through the tempering of complex environments, domestic companies have accumulated more solid technological capabilities.# The Two Poles of Autonomous Driving Technology: Chinese and American Companies

The competition between Chinese and foreign companies in autonomous driving technology is not just about pure technical competition, but a multi-dimensional competition that encompasses funding, fleet operations, and even macro-level legal regulations.

Currently, the United States has not yet allowed companies such as Waymo and Cruise to charge for autonomous driving orders, while China has already started commercial operations. From a commercial perspective, China has already completed its overtaking maneuver.

Some industry giants have already launched autonomous driving transportation services in Beijing, such as Robo-Taxi in nine cities including Beijing, Changsha, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Yangquan, and Wuzhen. In Beijing, Chongqing and Yangquan, commercial charging operations have been in operation for some time. According to Baidu’s 2021 annual report, as of December 31 last year, 213,000 passenger orders had been fulfilled.

In fact, Waymo allowed testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads as early as 2012, but to this day, its passenger service areas are limited to California and Arizona, with a quarterly peak of only 52,000 orders, only one-fourth of Baidu’s.

If technology is the first half of autonomous driving, then commercialization and scaled operations will be the industry’s second half, with the precondition being that the policy and legal framework is in place.

Although US companies may temporarily lag behind their Chinese counterparts in cost control, commercial trafficking, and technological investment. The US has remained ahead in terms of policy regulations.

On March 10th, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a 155-page “final rule,” canceling multiple regular control requirements for vehicles equipped with automated driving systems and unmanned vehicles.

48 days later, 12 US lawmakers wrote to US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg urging him to develop a comprehensive federal framework for autonomous cars, with significant reference to China’s significant technological progress.

In addition to the United States, Germany has become the world’s first country to allow autonomous vehicles to participate in daily traffic and be used nationwide this year. The UK has amended the “Highway Code” to allow vehicle owners to watch movies in autonomous driving mode.

Although Chinese autonomous driving technology is advancing rapidly, policy relaxation remains cautious and standards are yet to catch up with technological advancements, according to Professor Zhu Xichan, from the School of Automotive Studies at Tongji University.

Meanwhile, Deng Zhidong, a professor and PhD supervisor in the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University, and an expert in artificial intelligence, recently called for better policy planning and deployment that not only keeps up with the rapid development of US and European autonomous driving, but also encourages the early commercialization of autonomous driving and the emergence of all self-driving cars.

Autonomous driving will drive industry and consumption forward.Industry development relies on technology, while the progression and scale of development are closely related to policies.

In fact, cooperation and integration have long been the norm in the new energy industry. The rapid development of domestic new energy vehicles is largely due to policy support, so we have reason to believe that intelligence can replicate the path of electrification, bringing new impetus to the automotive and other industrial chains.

From the figure above, we can see the complete industry chain of the Robotaxi industry, involving companies in IT services, cloud computing capabilities, road infrastructure, to vehicle manufacturers, perception equipment, chips, network suppliers, and then to technology companies that provide algorithms. Autonomous driving capabilities have initially formed a long and high-precision industry chain.

The relaxation of autonomous driving policies may produce a “butterfly effect.” Under the new infrastructure wave, smart transportation can not only play a role in driving domestic demand but also help improve the traffic problems in large cities and reduce the accident rate.

Li Yanhong, Chairman and CEO of Baidu, has previously stated that if intelligent transportation is achieved, congestion problems will be basically solved in ten years by relying on the improvement of traffic efficiency. An intelligent transportation system constructed of new technologies, new concepts, and new models may reduce 90% of traffic accidents.

Every emergence of new technology creates new business models and new jobs, and autonomous driving is no exception. New forms like Robotaxi will create new labor categories like safety personnel, cloud drivers, technicians, and testers, and contribute to labor restructuring.

If we continue to expand our imagination, the complete display of autonomous driving capabilities will not only liberate drivers but also unleash the vitality of the entire vehicle ecosystem, especially for driving social consumption.

According to data from the Development Research Center of the State Council’s publication “Effective Expansion of Automobile Consumption Needs to Focus on Three Growth Points,” the market for automobile products exceeds 4 trillion yuan, accounting for 10% of the total retail sales of consumer goods. The intelligentialization represented by unmanned driving not only stimulates new demand for automobiles but may also create scenarios that have never been seen on PCs or mobile devices within the limited space of automobiles.

NIO’s latest delivery model, ET7, will support passengers to wear AR/VR glasses to enjoy audio-video entertainment functions, and the entertainment system of the upcoming L9 model from Ideal Auto will support the switch and other game console connections for projection. At the Model S Plaid release conference, Musk even used the vehicle’s infotainment system to demonstrate a game of Cyberpunk 2077. In addition, Musk has also revealed on social media that Tesla hopes to move the entire Steam library to Tesla instead of porting one game at a time conventionally.Obviously, after “getting rid of” the driver, the internal space of the car will not only give birth to a Focus Media, but perhaps be the best extension and continuation of mobile and PC terminals.

Unmanned driving not only liberates the driver’s hands, but also brings iteration of consumption scenarios, such as delivering to the car, in-cabin entertainment, and so on. Undoubtedly, in the AI era, cars will still be an important engine driving consumption.

And now, everything is ready, only the policy support is needed.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.