Car driver, which came into being over a hundred years ago, perhaps will withdraw from the historical arena like newspaper typesetters three or four years later. Driverless vehicles will see industrialization by 2021, predicted by Deng Zhidong, professor from Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, at the 2017 GUCE yesterday.
What is more encouraging is that based on the description of enterprises like Guangzhou Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co., Ltd. and Singulato Motors which attended the conference, China is very likely to realize “corner overtaking” in driverless vehicle industry.
“China will certainly achieve huge success as it boasts incomparable conditions in developing intelligent networking cars and Internet-based cars,” said Yin Chengliang, deputy dean at School of Mechanical Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Yin remarked that there is still certain gap between China and the US in terms of Internet technology field, but China has become the first biggest country of Internet application. It means that China possesses condition of constructing all-new Internet ecology, including all-new ecology of intelligent networking vehicle.
In his opinion, China’s self-driving cars will embrace overwhelming development opportunity in the future, and it is an inevitable trend that vehicles will become informationized and networked and carmakers join hands with Internet-based enterprises. Therefore, integration of Internet and vehicles will enjoy a bright future.
Opinions of Rong Hui, vice dean of New Technology Research Institute of BAIC Group, are more aggressive. He took bike sharing as an example and believed that the traditional automobile enterprises may be replaced by emerging enterprises in a very short period.
Fortunately, relevant administrative departments of China are assisting the industry of “future cars”.
“It is quite difficult to say when will be the first year of the era of driverless automobile industry, but the government is studying how to offer essential support.” Wu Shengwu, deputy director of electronic information department from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said frankly to the reporter of Shanghai Securities News that many issues are under research now.
“Along with the development of technologies such as cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, mobile Internet of Things, new generation of information technology and artificial intelligence, automobile industry is evolving to be networked, platform, servitization and digitization. Cars are equipped with functions like aided driving, partially autonomous driving (PA), conditional autonomous driving (CA) and highly autonomous driving. Automobile intelligentization, electrification and networking become important development trend for automobile industry,” said Wu.
MIIT’s minister Miao Wei said at the founding conference of China Industry Innovation Alliance for the Intelligent and Connected Vehicle on Monday that the MIIT will work on top-level design, formulating standard rules, making breakthrough in key technology, upgrading infrastructure and enhancing information security.
“Tackling problems in key technologies of intelligent networking vehicles” and “conducting demonstration and promotion of intelligent networking vehicles” are major contents in the Planning on Medium- and Long-term Development of Automobile Industry, which was jointly released by the MIIT, National Development and Reform Commission, and Ministry of Science and Technology. The reporter noticed that this planning also includes “project of promoting intelligent networking vehicles” by 2020. According to the planning, by 2020, assembly rate of driver assistance (DA), PA and CA systems will be over 50 percent, and that of connected driver assistance system will reach 10 percent so as to meet demand for building a city with intelligent transportation . By 2025, assembly rate of DA, PA and CA will be 80 percent, and that of PA and CA will reach 25 percent. Vehicles with highly and completely autonomous driving will hit the market.
“Optimistically, there may be 1 million driverless cars on the roads in China before 2020,” predicted by Yu Yinan, a head responsible for automatic drive technology at Horizon Robotics, a Beijing-based AI solutions provider.
Translated by Vanessa Chen
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