How Beijing E-Town pushes autonomous driving technology forward

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Yizhuang District (E-Town), the Economic and Technological Development Area of Beijing, hosted an intelligent vehicle carnival during the past weekend, showing the public its layout and achievements in the autonomous driving field.

Baidu Apollo Go Robotaxi 

As a high-level autonomous driving pilot zone, E-Town was not only the home to Beijing Mercedes-Benz, but also the host to various tech companies’ testing vehicles ranging from Robotaxis, Robobuses, last-mile delivery vehicles, street-sweepers, and patrol robots.

China’s autonomous ride-hailing service provider, Baidu Apollo, Pony.ai, QCraft, SenseTime, e-commerce giant JD.com and Meituan, and unmanned delivery vehicle developer Neolix all participated in the 2021 Intelligent Vehicle Future City Carnival.

JD.com, headquartered in E-Town, has deployed over 30 crewless last-mile delivery vehicles, providing residents with parcel delivery and grocery delivery services.

Neolix has more than 120 unmanned mobile vending robots in E-Town. Pedestrians are able to purchase food and beverages from the said robots on various campuses and outside subway stations.

Street-sweeper vehicles have also gone automated in E-Town. Self-operating street cleaning vehicle developer Autowise.ai currently has three Autowise V2 vehicles on the road. The vehicles can be remotely controlled, working under various complex weather and road situations.

Photo credit: E-Town

Aside from 16 domestic cities, Autowise.ai has successfully realized the commercialization of its products in Switzerland, Germany, and the U.S. 

Additionally, a fleet of patrolling robotic vehicles was also on display during the event. Every robot is installed with an emergency button and monitoring cameras, acting as a substitute for nighttime security guards around campuses and neighborhoods.

All of the above applications should be credited to E-Town’s steadfast commitment to expanding the district’s technology and urban life integration in the past years.

In 2017, E-Town established intelligent connected vehicle rush-hour testing roads as a forerunner across the world.

In 2019, Beijing launched autonomous human/cargo-carrying vehicle tests and started to operate the city’s first T5 standard autonomous driving closed testing area in E-Town. In the same year, E-Town has opened up 40 square kilometers of testing areas and finished construction 40-kilometer V2X (vehicle to everything) testing roads.

In September last year, E-Town was declared a high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone by Beijing. Since then, the local authorities have been devoted to experimenting with vehicle, road, cloud, and network integration in urban life. As of now, the demonstration zone has completed its initial phase of car-road-synergy service capabilities and is promoting the 2.0 version construction.

Earlier in April this year, E-Town was named as Beijing’s intelligent connected vehicle policies pilot zone and granted permission to implement road test, application, commercial services, and roadside infrastructure constructions moderately ahead of time. 

As of now, the E-Town demonstration area has accumulated over 1.8 million kilometers of testing mileage and established 111 autonomous driving testing roads totaling 322 kilometers. A cumulative 126 passenger vehicle licenses have been issued, along with 4 commercial vehicle licenses and 72 crewless vehicle serial numbers.

Pony.ai and Baidu’s Apollo were also granted driverless road test permissions earlier this month. Currently, the two companies have a combined number of over 150 autonomous driving vehicles (with safety monitors) in the 60 square kilometers operational fields in E-Town, providing residents free mobility services.