Cooperation between new infrastructure and traditional enterprises

This time, it is no longer the self-driving car company that adapts to the "old order".

Recently, the Ministry of Transport issued "General Technical Specification for Highway Engineering Adapting to Autopilot Accessory Facilities (Draft for Comment)" (hereinafter referred to as "Draft for Comment on Technical Specification for Autopilot Highway"), which set standards and directions for the construction of Autopilot Highway from the top design. This means that the first national standard for self-driving highways in China will be introduced soon.

The Highway Science Research Institute of the Ministry of Communications said that at present, China's autonomous driving has entered the initial stage of industrialization, and highway engineering needs new standards and requirements. The proposal of "Technical Specification for Self-driving Highway" will open the curtain of road digitalization, and autonomous driving will be a step closer to the actual road.

The "new regulations" are about to be born.

From September 2065438 to September 2009, the Outline of Building a Traffic Power issued by the State Council clearly proposed to strengthen the research and development of intelligent networked vehicles (smart cars, autonomous driving and vehicle-road coordination), form an autonomous and controllable industrial chain, develop a new generation of intelligent traffic management systems, popularize intelligent detection, monitoring and operation and maintenance technologies of traffic equipment, and build ubiquitous and advanced traffic information infrastructure.

At present, the opinion draft of the technical specification for self-driving highway regulates high-precision maps, positioning facilities, communication facilities, traffic signs and markings, traffic control and guidance facilities, traffic perception facilities, roadside computing facilities, functions and lighting facilities, automatic driving monitoring and service centers, network security and other fields, paving the way for driving conditions in an all-round way.

▲ Schematic diagram of autonomous driving lane

It is understood that in addition to Chang 'an, Tsinghua, Tongji and other universities, Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba, Gaode, Chihiro and other technology giants also participated in the preparation of this opinion draft. As can be seen from the participating enterprises, the Technical Specification for Self-driving Highway will cover all aspects of technologies required for intelligent transportation, and can undertake the conditions for self-driving cars to drive on the road independently. According to the Institute of Highway Science of the Ministry of Communications, the technical requirements of ancillary facilities of highway engineering are mainly aimed at people's physiological and psychological characteristics, with the goal of ensuring people to drive vehicles safely and smoothly on the road.

On April 27th, the official media reported that Hangzhou-Shaozhi Expressway, the first "super expressway" under construction in China, was equipped with self-driving lanes. The construction scheme of this "super expressway" was compiled by the Highway Science Research Institute of the Ministry of Communications, shouldering the exploration purpose of smart expressway, and it is planned to be officially opened to traffic in 2022, and it will take the lead in serving the Hangzhou Asian Games held in 2022. In addition, according to the plan, the total investment of this expressway with a length of 174 km is about 70.7 billion, and the investment intensity exceeds 400 million per km.

Driven by the first "super highway" and "draft technical specification for self-driving highway", self-driving highway will begin to be built on a large scale, and "intelligent highway" will become the focus of road construction.

Hundreds of trillions of "feasts"

Under the guidance of "new infrastructure", the country has opened a "green channel", and the field of autonomous driving and its new infrastructure construction are accelerating the layout and landing.

For example, in Changsha, Hunan, citizens can already call Apollo Robotaxi through Baidu map, without manual intervention during driving, and at present, every car will be equipped with security officers; On April 27th, Gaode Taxi announced that it will cooperate with AutoX and will launch the Robotaxi experience recruitment activity in Shanghai in the near future. Shanghai became the third city for Robotaxi to "go on the road" after Guangzhou and Changsha.

With the deepening of national policies, more and more cities are opening up the road test of Robotaxi, which is actually paving the way for autonomous driving. At the same time, with the release of the Technical Specification for Autopilot Highway, the application of autopilot technology in the industry will be fully launched, and high-precision maps, positioning facilities, communication facilities, traffic sensing facilities, autopilot monitoring and service centers, network security and other fields will release huge market space and vitality.

According to McKinsey's data report in 20 19, the scale of self-driving in China will exceed US$ 1 trillion, which has the potential to become the largest self-driving car market in the world, and will increase the liquidity profit of China's self-driving car industry by at least US$ 60 billion. In McKinsey's benchmark forecast, in 2040, self-driving cars may account for 66% of passenger kilometers, and generate 1. 1 trillion dollars of market income from travel services. Driven by "new infrastructure", this may be a "feast" that can reach a market scale of several trillion.

At present, Baidu Apollo, Ma Xiao Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing and other auto-driving related enterprises are testing the auto-driving of passenger cars by providing RoboTaxi services to the public. Zhijia Technology, Tucson Future and other enterprises took the lead in carrying out the automatic driving heavy truck test for commercial landing in ports and other places. In addition, SAIC, Dongfeng Motor and other traditional car companies also embrace the "new future" through cooperation with Huawei, Ma Xiao Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing.

In terms of high-precision maps, at present, 20 domestic enterprises have obtained the "Grade A navigation electronic map production qualification" granted by the state, including Huawei, Baidu, Gaode Map, Siweituxin and so on. Judging from the current competition pattern, the three giants of BAT have basically completed the staking of the map market, forming a three-legged situation of Gaode (acquired by Alibaba), Baidu and NavInfo (Tencent Holdings).

In addition, communication equipment manufacturers represented by Huawei, ZTE and Datang; Automatic driving monitoring and service center in cooperation with cloud service providers such as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud; Players such as traffic awareness facilities and roadside computing facilities headed by Baidu are accelerating their layout.

With the introduction of national standards for self-driving roads, there will be an upsurge of self-driving road construction in more areas, which will bring great convenience to the road test and commercialization of self-driving. At the same time, with the continuous improvement of infrastructure and the continuous improvement of vehicle intelligence, it will also promote the development of domestic autonomous driving industry. As the Highway Science Research Institute of the Ministry of Communications said, at present, China's autonomous driving has entered the initial stage of industrialization, and the large-scale operation of autonomous driving is coming soon, and the realization of fully autonomous vehicles is not far off.