Just last November, four ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying out Pilot Work on the Access and Road Access of Intelligent Connected Vehicles", announcing the full launch of a new round of domestic autonomous driving "road test" projects. Soon after, a large number of car companies, including Changan , Jihu , etc., officially announced that they had obtained L3 level autonomous driving road test qualifications, and a new wave of "autonomous driving" officially hit.
First, Huawei and Cyrus also announced that their new car Wenjie m9 also successfully obtained 11 L3 level autonomous driving test licenses, of which 5 were in Chongqing and 6 were Shenzhen licenses, followed by BMW The group also announced that it has officially obtained a high-speed autonomous driving test license from Shanghai. Mercedes-Benz also followed suit, announcing that it had become one of the first car companies to obtain a Beijing conditional autonomous driving (L3) highway road test license. In addition, Changan and its Deep Blue , Avita Announcements have also been issued one after another.
Don’t think that the above-mentioned car companies are grabbing spots just to gain popularity and attention. In fact, even popular car companies like BYD, which has no shortage of sales, are actively fighting for . So on the night of December 27, BYD It was suddenly announced that they had obtained the autonomous driving (L3) level test license. What is interesting is that judging from the time of obtaining the license, they had already obtained the license as early as July 21, 2023. The reason for announcing it at the end of the year may be I saw that my competitors were too high-profile, so I was "forced" to make some responses.
It can be seen how enthusiastic car companies are about autonomous driving with the support of policies. So why has L3 autonomous driving suddenly become popular in China?
In fact, the concept of autonomous driving L3 classification was proposed by the American Society of Automotive Engineers. It roughly means that with the help of the automation system, the vehicle can perform all dynamic driving tasks. In other words, means that it can not The driver can complete the driving task. Of course, what this refers to is under certain conditions, rather than complete freedom. But logically speaking, as long as the car's assisted driving system can reach L3, it will basically have "autonomous driving" Ability.
This was once considered impossible many years ago. On the one hand, there were technical reasons . In that era when the Internet was not very developed, chip computing power had not yet taken off, and the concept of intelligent automobiles had not yet become popular, indeed It is indeed a fantasy to realize so-called autonomous driving. At the same time, some people believe that letting the system control the car is also against "human ethics" and may bring potential safety hazards to human society. Therefore, when l3 was proposed early In recent years, most car companies have not been optimistic about it.
Until recent years, the substantial development of chip computing power and artificial intelligence technology has brought about a turn for the better in these years. . Self-driving companies have sprung up one after another. In addition, the automobile industry has been seriously involved in involution, and car companies are very worried. It is difficult to find new business growth points, so funds have been invested in this field. With money, it is difficult to get things done. This has also ushered in the spring of the autonomous driving industry. Of course, policy factors are also on the one hand. We have already mentioned this in previous articles and will not repeat it here.
However, compared to the media's massive hype about this "sudden fire incident in domestic autonomous driving road tests", Director Hu Jing from Shenzhen Future Intelligent Networked Transportation System Industry Innovation Center behaved relatively calmly. She was interviewed by the media Shi said: "In fact, there is nothing special about the fact that many car companies have officially announced that they have obtained L3 road test licenses (basically all for highways). They should mainly apply for L3 level autonomous vehicle access for the next step. and prepare for the road.”
In other words, The opening of L3 autonomous driving road test qualifications is not a big breakthrough in autonomous driving. There is nothing special. . After all, autonomous driving robotaxi operation tests in the commercial field have already been carried out. For a long time, trial operation projects for self-driving cars have been launched in various places. Therefore, this time the so-called car companies are vying for test quotas, it is simply because the media is excited.
is at least 13 years away from being officially launched on the road. There is still a long way to go before entering thousands of households.