More roads open for driverless vehicle testing

Caption: Shot by Jiang Xiaowei. Edited by Jiang Xiaowei.

Credit: Jiang Xiaowei / SHINE

Caption: Driverless vehicles run on the second batch of roads open for testing in the Pudong New Area on Tuesday.

The Pudong New Area announced its second list of roads open for driverless vehicle testing on Tuesday.

The new roads, 205 kilometers in length, cover the entire Jinqiao Economic and Technological Development Zone and North-South Scientific Innovation Corridor including Shenjiang Road, Hunan and Lianggang highways.

So far, the city has 1,003 roads, over 2,000 kilometers, open for driverless vehicle testing.

Credit: Li Yi / SHINE

Caption: The roads open for driverless testing on Tuesday.

Shanghai has been designating testing roads for driverless vehicles since 2018. So far, the city has created four demonstration zones in Jiading, Lingang, Fengxian and Jinqiao.

The Shanghai Transportation Commission said the expansion of testing roads just announced is to achieve a connection of automatic driving roads in Jinqiao and Lingang, allowing more smart vehicles to carry out smart testing.

In the future, Jinqiao will boost a series of smart applications such as driverless taxis, unmanned delivery, automatic parking and driverless buses, building a role model of industry-intensive vehicle-city integration.

Companies involving in driverless vehicles must do road testing, pilot application and pilot operation and then they can run a commercial business.

The local government issued a rule in 2022 to regulate and instruct the development of intelligent taxis, intelligent delivery and intelligent public transport, encouraging traditional taxi enterprises to get involved in innovation and create a new intelligent traffic service model.

At present, 32 companies with 794 vehicles have received approval for road testing, pilot application and pilot operation. The total testing mileage is 22.9 million kilometers and testing duration is about 1.22 million hours. All data ranked in the leading position in the nation, the commission said.