Shanghai passes regulation for driverless vehicles’ commercial operation

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- The Shanghai Municipal People's Congress released an announcement on November 30 regarding a regulation that boosts the city’s driverless intelligent connected vehicle application.

Photo credit: Baidu Apollo

According to the Congress’ official platform, the regulation has been passed on November 23, 2022, and will carry into effect starting February 1, 2023. 

The driverless intelligent connected vehicles referred in the regulation are intelligent connected vehicles with no driver or safety supervisors on board. This signifies that corresponding entities will be able to carry out innovative application activities such as road testing, demonstration application, demonstration operation, and commercial operation of intelligent connected vehicles with an empty vehicle in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area.

According to the regulation, enterprises that obtain vehicle operation certificates according to relevant requirements are allowed to conduct demonstration operations and charge fees with their driverless intelligent connected vehicles to the public.

In order to seize a leading position in the development progress of intelligent connected vehicles, Shanghai has proposed that the scale of its intelligent connected vehicles industry will reach 500 billion yuan by 2025. By that time, vehicles powered by L2 and L3 autonomous driving functions should account for more than 70% of the city’s new car production volume. Vehicles with L4 and higher-level autonomous driving capabilities are allowed to realize commercial operation in limited areas under specific scenarios in Shanghai.