Beijing to start road tests for intelligent connected bus from Baidu, QCraft and SenseTime

Beijing (Gasgoo)- On March 31st, the office of the Beijing high-level automated driving demonstration area issued a management and enforcement regulation on intelligent connected bus road tests and pilot demonstrations.

Photo credit: Beijing E-Town

The regulation specifies that all intelligent connected buses must have one safety driver and one administrator onboard to ensure driving and regulatory safety. Participating entities are required to conduct road tests and demonstration works under the area’s established routes, stations, operation intervals, operational hours, and fleet sizes ahead of time. 

Road tests should be conducted only after the participating entities passed the mandatory no-load test and the simulated loaded test successively. During pilot demonstrations, participating passengers should be volunteers who passed the recruitment tests to be facilitated by the office. 

Photo credit: Beijing E-Town

Insurance-wise, participating entities should purchase liability insurance or compensation letters of guarantee of no less than RMB5 million per vehicle and passenger liability insurance of no less than RMB500,000 per seat. 

The regulation also sets specific standards and requirements for technical configurations of the intelligent connected buses, including the length, seating capacity, driving speed, and battery-powered range. 

Preliminary, local tech giants Baidu, QCraft, and SenseTime will put in eight intelligent connected buses for road tests in the area.