After Beijing, Baidu again receives license of autonomous vehicle road test in Chongqing

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chongqing issued its first batch of licenses to 7 automakers and tech companies on April 18 that allow autonomous vehicles to be tested on roads, including Chongqing Changan, Baidu, FAW Group, Dongfeng, GAC Group, Geely and Foton Auto. Besides, the autonomous vehicle road test in Chongqing was officially initiated at the same day.

Reportedly, Baidu was the first company to pass the test of Chongqing to obtain the license that permits its autonomous vehicle to be tested on public roads. In many testing scenarios, Baidu's autonomous vehicles successfully completed the task on the first try. In March, the Chinese Internet giant had already got Beijing's license to conduct open road tests for its autonomous driving vehicles in designated areas of the city.

This is the second autonomous road test license for Chongqing Changan since it received a similar permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles in November 2017. As early as April 2016, the automaker had completed a 2000-km test drive from Chongqing to Beijing. In March this year, Chongqing Changan launched the L2 autonomous driving technology dubbed IACC (integrated adapted cruise control). According to the company's introduction, the IACC, integrating millimeter-wave radar, multifunctional cameras and navigation map, is able to perceive the driving environments and keep the vehicle within the correct lane or following the track left by the front target vehicle through a series of operations such as brake, automatic acceleration or deceleration and veer, etc.

As the first commercial vehicle (CV) marker that got autonomous vehicle road test license in China, Foton Auto had quite nice performance during the qualification test. Purportedly, the CV maker passed all of six items at one shot, including lane-keeping, automatic brake as well as lane-changing and overtaking, etc.

Xie Fei, vice general manager of China Automotive Technology & Research Center (CATARC), said that Chongqing has advantages over timing, terrain and human resource to carry out autonomous vehicle road test. In the middle of March this year, Chongqing became the third city in China that issued regulations to allow road test for autonomous vehicles. Compared to Beijing and Shanghai, Chongqing's regulations contain more abundant road testing items than the other two cities.

Besides, Chongqing possesses affluent traffic scenarios and terrains, such as high-speed loop, long tunnel, rampway, curve, bridge. Moreover, it also owns some unique scenarios like “3D city” and “5D interchange”.

In addition, Chongqing designated CATARC as the third party testing institute who not only owns the most comprehensive ICV testing facilities nationwide, but also has China's first operational autonomous driving monitoring center. Meanwhile, it possesses commendable strengths in talent pool, management and procedure control, etc.