Intelligent, connected cars hold keys to the future

Automakers, tech giants and governments are all racing to new tech horizons

The Chinese government said it is paying great attention to intelligent vehicles and considers their development vital to easing the burden on transportation, energy consumption and environmental pollution, a top official said.

"By 2020, the market scale of the country's intelligent connected vehicles sector is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion; 12.8 billion euros; ￡11.5 billion)," said Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei at the World Intelligent Connected Vehicles Conference held in Beijing in October.

"A new era of the automobile industry is here," he said. "The development of intelligent connected vehicles can drive the technological reform and upgrading of the automobile industry."

With the Chinese government fostering the development of smart vehicles, several cities have enacted laws and regulations for trials of autonomous driving, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Changchun.

Beijing takes the lead

Chen Jining, the mayor of Beijing, said the capital city regards self-driving vehicles as one of the key development objectives for advanced industry since last year and has introduced special supportive policies to promote open road tests.

Beijing will take the lead in forming a complete technological system of intelligent connected vehicles that meet the requirements of advanced autonomous driving, known as Level 4, according to a white paper by the Beijing Commission of Economy and Information Technology that was issued on the sidelines of the conference.

By mid-October this year, Beijing had opened 44 road sections with a total length of 123 km on which automakers can test their autonomous driving technology, the white paper said.

Chen said the smart vehicle industry, as a strategic development direction in the new era, is closely related to a wide range of industries; therefore, its improvement requires joint efforts from all parties.

China's major internet giants are already embracing the trend and betting big on the promising market.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu Inc has taken the lead in China to realize fully autonomous driving under the mixed road conditions of urban roads, beltways and expressways, and is mass producing the Apolong, China's first Level 4 fully self-driving minibus. It plans to ship buses to Japan early next year.

Baidu has been engaged in the automobile industry since 2013.

"The Apollo project launched by Baidu in 2017 has become the world's largest intelligent driving environment," said Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu.

Partners jump on board

The Apollo intelligent driving system has attracted 129 ecopartners and more than 10,000 developers to create products so far. Due to the open platform, many "new species" of autonomous driving have joined the field, such as driverless trucks, unmanned delivery vehicles, unmanned sanitation cars and autonomous wheelchairs.

Li said Baidu has pushed forward a series of initiatives aimed at limiting unintended consequences from artificial intelligence, as the internet giant has taken safety and security as its first principles in the development of autonomous driving.

E-commerce leader Alibaba Group has been developing its own internet-connected vehicle technology. The technology giant collaborated with SAIC Motor Co and launched the internet-connected model Roewe RX5, which sparked a buying frenzy.

Alibaba said it believes the development of smart vehicles should not be limited to the product itself, but expand the vision from the car to the road.

"It's worth thinking about whether smart cars can effectively use road resources," said Wang Jian, chairman of Alibaba Group's technical committee. "The internet should be another form of infrastructure for cars, just as roads are."

Alibaba's plans for automatic driving run alongside its vehicle-road synergy project, which sees autonomous vehicles driving in an information-based environment and obtaining required road environment information from an intelligent transportation system.

Wang said technological progress is closely related to the optimization of urban resources.

Underpinning that goal is Alibaba's acceleration into real-world testing of autonomous driving. The company announced in September that its driverless fleet had been granted test license plates by the authorities in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Another internet giant, Tencent, is not far behind. It has signed strategic cooperation agreements with FAW, BMW, GAC, Changan and other automakers. Several models powered by Tencent's internet of vehicles system, AI in Car, are already on the market.

Pony Ma, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said the company is designing a voice interaction system to help drivers safely send and receive messages, minimizing distractions while driving.

"Carmakers are the leaders in the intelligent connected vehicle industry, and Tencent's position is clearly as an assistant, which helps the automobile industry upgrade and transform," Ma said.

Collaboration needed

"No single automotive enterprise can provide all the resources and capabilities required to produce an intelligent connected vehicle. The future of the automobile industry needs efforts from internet tech giants and traditional carmakers," he said.

Major Chinese carmakers had similar views.

"Traditional automobile enterprises and internet technology companies are naturally and strongly complementary," said Xu Heyi, chairman of Beijing Automotive Group, or BAIC Group.

BAIC unveiled its five-year plan, which aims to equip all its products with world-leading self-driving or intelligent connected technologies by 2020.

"BAIC will strengthen its industrial presence in high-performance sensors, controllers, computing platforms, automatic driving systems and high-precision maps," Xu said.

The group will cooperate with world-leading electronics company Bosch, Chinese tech giant Baidu, Chinese voice technology firm iFlytek Co and other tech firms to integrate high-quality resources across the globe to build an open intelligent connected vehicle ecosystem, Xu said.

BAIC is not the first carmaker that has decided to build such an ecosystem.

BYD Co has launched its own car app platform, D++. Using the platform, app developers can gain access to 66 control rights, 341 sensors and extensive vehicle data.

"We are the first car brand to open all sensors and controls," said Wang Chuanfu, chairman and president of BYD. "It is also the first step in the process of establishing a fully open vehicle ecosystem."

The platform has already attracted dozens of partners, including Baidu with its self-driving Apollo system, online security company 360 Security Technology Inc and AI specialist Horizon Robotics.

xuhe@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 12/21/2018 page25)