Beijing autonomous driving road test report released: Baidu Apollo, the leading player in China and abroad, accounts for 91% of the total mileage

On April 1, the "Beijing Autonomous Driving Vehicle Road Test 2018 Annual Work Report" was officially released, which announced the road test data of 8 testing companies in the past year. Among them, in accordance with Beijing's work requirements of "safety first, orderly innovation", Baidu obtained the most test licenses, the most actual road test mileage, and the most comprehensive coverage of open test scenarios.

(Issuance and process accumulation of temporary road test licenses)

It is understood that the 54 valid autonomous driving vehicles registered in Beijing account for more than 50% of the country, and Beijing ranks first in the country in terms of the scale of test licenses, the number of test subjects, and the richness of vehicle types. The report published the data and information of each company's autonomous driving road tests in Beijing, and used this as a measurement standard to disclose the number of compliant vehicles, test mileage, test subjects, and test area coverage. According to the "Report", Beijing implements a step-by-step "field-road-area" autonomous driving test management strategy. That is, all autonomous driving vehicles applying for autonomous driving test licenses must pass more than 5,000 kilometers of closed test field training and pass vehicle safety technical inspections before they can be tested on the road. Among them, Baidu is the first company to obtain a closed field T3 test license for autonomous driving.

(Real shots of some test scenes)

In terms of road test mileage, the autonomous driving vehicles tested in Beijing have a total road test mileage of 153,565 kilometers. Among them, Baidu alone accounts for 91% of the total road test mileage with a road test score of 139,887.7 kilometers.

In terms of compliance licenses, since Baidu obtained the first Beijing autonomous driving road test license in March 2018, a total of 8 test entities have successively obtained road test licenses. As of the end of 2018, Beijing had issued a total of 54 autonomous driving test licenses, of which Baidu held 45 licenses, becoming the only large-scale testing company. According to the report analysis, Baidu's 140,000 kilometers of road test mileage should have been "run out" within three quarters since it obtained 45 licenses in 2018. It is not difficult to guess that Baidu has carried out road tests in many places across the country in recent years, and the total cumulative test mileage must be much greater than this data. Driven by the goal of mass production, Baidu will certainly adhere to China's road test requirements in the future and further expand the scale of compliance licenses.

(Test subject test regional coverage)

In terms of test area coverage, Baidu has achieved "comprehensive coverage" of R1-R3&RX road networks of various difficulties and scenarios on the autonomous driving test roads in Yizhuang, Haidian, and Shunyi. For the complex open road traffic environment in China, the comprehensive coverage of road scenarios confirms Baidu's strong technical strength and safety management and assurance capabilities for autonomous driving.

(Beijing autonomous driving open road testing)

In recent years, Beijing has accelerated the layout of the entire industry chain of intelligent connected vehicles, and has basically formed an intelligent connected vehicle industry system covering all links of the industry chain. Beijing's autonomous driving test roads have now reached 123 kilometers, distributed in four areas: Yizhuang, Haidian, Shunyi and Fangshan, covering a variety of road traffic environments such as urban trunk roads, secondary trunk roads, branch roads, and park trunk roads, fully meeting the current research and development and testing needs of passenger cars and commercial vehicles for autonomous driving. Beijing has also become the city with the longest autonomous driving road test mileage, the most open test roads, and the most comprehensive coverage of scenarios in the country.

The release of this report shows Beijing’s layout of the autonomous driving industry from multiple dimensions, and provides an “Eastern perspective” for the assessment of the strength of autonomous driving companies.

Beijing's autonomous driving technology report standardization has been put in place first, fundamentally ensuring the safety of road tests. At present, autonomous driving technology is still in the testing stage. In open road testing, the premise of improving autonomous driving capabilities is to ensure public safety. A 100,000-kilometer safety test without an accident is the basic threshold, which can not only reflect the level of the vehicle's autonomous driving capabilities, but also reflect the comprehensive safety test management capabilities such as the quality assurance system and fleet operation management.

(Open road test mileage statistics)

The issuance of autonomous driving licenses in Beijing is progressing steadily, providing an opportunity for companies with scale capabilities. For autonomous driving testing companies, it is relatively easy for one car to be on the road, but for dozens of cars to be put on the streets on a large scale for road testing, the stability and consistency of the vehicles are required to be higher, which is more difficult. Large-scale road testing can reflect the full-stack technical capabilities of an enterprise, such as software and hardware integration and vehicle integration, and is also a prerequisite for the mass production and implementation of autonomous driving. Beijing is obviously already making various preparations for the mass production and implementation of autonomous driving. Large-scale testing requires a very large investment, and in order to achieve the goals of mass production and implementation, all players will continue to invest, which is why Baidu Apollo has always emphasized "safety and mass production".

In addition, autonomous driving needs to adapt to different road conditions from simple to complex, in order to demonstrate the adaptability of autonomous driving and the transferability of technology. For example, Baidu, which has the widest test coverage in the list, has not only run autonomous driving on urban roads, but also on various types of roads such as rural roads, achieving comprehensive coverage of social roads.

It is reported that in October 2018, Baidu obtained the first batch of autonomous driving test licenses in Changsha. At the end of the year, it completed the country's first L3 and L4 level multi-model high-speed scene autonomous driving vehicle-road collaboration demonstration in Changsha. In the second half of 2019, Baidu will have an autonomous driving taxi fleet in Changsha. With such frequent interactions, Changsha is expected to become Baidu's second large-scale test city. In this way, Baidu is ready to carry out large-scale testing and further "land" in more cities.

The release of the Beijing Autonomous Driving Technology Report provides the world with a Chinese perspective on autonomous driving from a technical perspective. On the road to the safe development of autonomous driving, strict supervision, innovative awareness and rich road testing experience are all necessary. China's autonomous driving industry is also progressing safely and rapidly under the multi-party supervision of the government and society, adding color to the future construction of intelligent transportation and smart cities.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.