Tesla clarifies the timetable for FSD’s entry into China, and how does China’s driverless driving ＂lead＂ globally？
On September 5th, Tesla released a road map on social media, and predicted to launch fully autonomous driving technology (FSD) in China and Europe in the first quarter of 2025. Although it still needs regulatory approval, it still attracts great attention. At the same time, Tesla’s plan to launch Robotaxi (driverless taxi) on October 10 this year has also caused widespread discussion. It is reported that the Tesla Robotaxi conference will be held in Hollywood studios, and its vehicle seats may lie flat and rotate.
In April this year, Musk made a "lightning visit to China" to speed up the landing of FSD. Obviously, as a representative of American technology enterprises, Tesla is not willing to lag behind China enterprises in the field of driverless driving.
It is worth mentioning that after years of development, China’s driverless industry has taken Beijing as the starting point and completed an amazing leap from technology research and development to application, which has blossomed in major cities across the country.
It is understood that as one of the most active cities in driverless innovation in the world, Beijing has been leading the way since it released the first self-driving road test and demonstration policy in 2017, and promoted technological innovation with policies. At the beginning of 2024, the demonstration area has achieved full coverage of 160 square kilometers of intelligent networked roads and smart city private networks, taking the lead in opening a number of commercial pilot services such as autonomous driving, and keeping ahead in supporting policies, opening test roads, supervision and management, etc.
At present, Beijing has covered eight main application scenarios, including self-driving taxis, self-driving minibuses, unmanned feeder vehicles, unmanned delivery vehicles, unmanned sanitation vehicles, unmanned patrol vehicles, self-driving heavy trucks and unmanned retail vehicles.
In Yizhuang, Beijing, driverless cars from radish Kuaipao, Xiaoma Zhixing and Wen Yuan Zhixing are driving in the streets, providing travel services for more citizens.
Behind Beijing’s support for driverless development is a new round of global technical competition. As an important landing scene of artificial intelligence, driverless driving has become the commanding height of global scientific and technological competition. In order to accelerate the development of unmanned driving in China, many experts have called for speeding up legislation and policy innovation at the national level, promoting the large-scale landing of unmanned vehicles, and keeping China’s unmanned driving ahead.
The unmanned large-scale landing faces the "stone of other mountains". What are the challenges?
Not only Tesla FSD has entered China, but in recent years, unmanned driving between China and the United States has been staged at its peak, which has also pushed the competition in the global unmanned driving industry to a fever pitch. At the same time, Germany, Japan, Britain and many other traditional automobile manufacturing countries have also joined the unmanned competition camp, implemented industrial deployment from the national strategic level, and made continuous legislative actions to seize the development opportunities of the unmanned industry by creating an "institutional highland".
At present, Chinese and American companies are neck and neck in the landing of driverless technology. As the world’s industry leaders, Waymo in the United States and Radish Run in China have both crossed the threshold of unmanned automatic driving test and are competing for the speed of large-scale landing.
According to the data released by Waymo on September 5th, as of June, 2024, Waymo has traveled 15.4 million miles in Phoenix, 5.9 million miles in San Francisco, 855,000 miles in Los Angeles and 14,000 miles in Austin. The cumulative mileage of unmanned vehicles in the four cities has exceeded 22.2 million miles, an increase of 212% compared with 7.1 million miles eight months ago.
It is worth noting that Waymo announced two weeks ago that its number of paid trips for unmanned vehicles in the United States has exceeded 100,000 times per week. This figure was only 50,000 in May, which means that Waymo’s weekly single volume has doubled in just three months.
It is observed that this growth is related to Waymo’s continuous expansion of service area and allowing more users to take its driverless taxis this year. It is understood that Waymo expanded its driverless travel service in the San Francisco Peninsula in March this year, and announced in June that it would open its driverless travel service to users all over San Francisco. More than 700 unmanned vehicles were carried out in prosperous urban areas such as San Francisco and Los Angeles in the United States. Full-time (7×24 hours), unmanned and chargeable scale operation.
With the recent opening of unmanned driving in San Francisco, the surge in the number of unmanned vehicles and the increase in the number of users covered, Waymo also surpassed Radish Run, the largest self-driving travel platform in China. According to public data, since it landed in Wuhan in May 2022, there are only over 400 unmanned vehicles in Wuhan, and the order volume per quarter is about 826,000 orders, with an average of about 68,000 orders per week.
In the industry’s view, the large-scale development of Waymo autonomous driving is inseparable from the open attitude and "leap-forward, fast-paced" approach adopted by the United States for driverless driving. Boldly let go at the regulatory level and give a green light all the way, giving Robotaxi the greatest development space.
In the view of Lv Benfu, vice president of China National Innovation and Development Strategy Research Association and professor of Chinese Academy of Sciences, it is the window of global intelligent networked vehicles development, and the opportunity is fleeting. China’s driverless technology is at the leading level in the world, and the policy actively supports industrial development. Only when enterprises actively embrace intelligent networked vehicles without hesitation will they not fall behind in the core frontier technology field in the future.
However, European and American countries are also actively developing the driverless industry. For example, in June this year, the British "Self-driving Car Act" was approved by the royal family, which established a complete legal framework for self-driving cars, including the vehicle authorization system. Self-driving cars can not only be legally on the road, but also be authorized to provide automated passenger services. The British government said that the Bill will pave the way for self-driving vehicles to run smoothly in the UK in 2026.
In fact, driverless driving is a new industry that needs to be developed in practical application. It has no practical significance in simulation test and unmanned road test. It needs to verify technology in complex and changeable real roads, improve cognitive ability in interaction with surrounding real vehicles and pedestrians, and solve practical problems in the road ahead, so as to make unmanned vehicles stronger and safer.
Zhang Zhuting, chairman of the Legal Work Committee of China Communications and Transportation Association and a senior researcher at Taihe Think Tank, said that the development of autonomous driving in China has been in a critical period of development. The passage of the Self-driving Car Act in Britain and the successive legislation in other countries have greatly inspired us. At the same time, intelligent networked new energy vehicles are the main application direction of artificial intelligence and an important field for developing new quality productivity. We should speed up the introduction of policies and regulations related to autonomous driving to ensure the leading position of China’s intelligent networked automobile industry in the world.
Experts call for speeding up the opening of legislation and policies and promoting the scale of unmanned driving.
In the development process of unmanned driving, policy opening is the booster of this technology from "laboratory" to "test site". Up to now, the General Office of the State Council has initiated the revision of the road traffic safety law and road transport regulations. At present, more than 10 cities across the country have promoted local legislation on autonomous driving, and six places, including Shenzhen, Pudong, Yangquan, Wuxi, Suzhou and Hangzhou, have issued legislative documents, while Wuhan, Beijing, Hefei and Guangzhou have accelerated the legislative process.
Taking Beijing as an example, it has maintained a leading position in many aspects, such as testing road opening, evaluation standards, guiding policies, and license issuance, and has become a dual highland of intelligent networked automobile technology innovation and policy innovation. Through multi-faceted technical exploration, Beijing has achieved a key breakthrough in the "China Plan" for the integration of vehicles and Lu Yun, and demonstrated "China Power" to the world with the "Beijing Model".
It is worth mentioning that in July this year, the Beijing Economic and Information Bureau solicited opinions on the Regulations of Beijing Municipality on Self-driving Cars (Draft for Comment), and planned to support self-driving cars for urban bus passenger transport, network car rental, car rental and other urban travel services.
"The" Draft for Comment "proposes to support self-driving cars for urban travel services such as urban bus passenger transport, network car rental, etc., which shows Beijing’s determination to promote the commercial application of autonomous driving technology." Wang Peng, a researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that clarifying the application scenarios of self-driving cars through legislation will not only help to broaden its market space, but also provide legal support for related enterprises to innovate and explore in different fields. In the future, with the continuous maturity of autonomous driving technology, these application scenarios will be further enriched and improved to provide citizens with more convenient and efficient travel services.
At the same time, the "Draft for Comment" clarifies the legal status of self-driving cars. For a long time, self-driving cars have faced many obstacles due to the lack of clear legal definition. This legislation is expected to formally confirm the legal status of self-driving cars from the legal level and provide legal protection for them to drive on the road. This not only helps to promote the research and development and application of autonomous driving technology, but also provides a more stable and predictable policy environment for related enterprises and investors.
Previously, many experts and scholars called for accelerating legislative and policy innovation at the national level, clarifying the legal status of self-driving cars through legislation, promoting the scale of unmanned driving, and continuing to lead the development of the global driverless industry.
Jiang Haoran, member of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, secretary of the Party Committee and chairman of Hengyin Financial Technology Co., Ltd., said that at present, the local small-scale pilot demonstration policy of local driverless vehicles on the road is mainly based on the scientific experiment of autonomous driving. Due to the lack of strong support from the superior law, the large-scale pilot demonstration for industrialization is difficult. It is suggested to strengthen the top-level legislative design at the national level, seize the opportunity of the current revision of the Road Traffic Safety Law, build a sound collaborative support and supervision system for autonomous driving, solidly and effectively promote industry norms and local legislation, and ensure the large-scale road traffic of driverless vehicles; At the same time, it is clear about the conditions and procedures for drivers’ vehicles to pass on the road, and support the road right permission of drivers’ vehicles in the form of laws and regulations.
He Xia, former chief engineer and professor-level engineer of the Institute of Policy and Economics of China Information and Communication Research Institute, believes that local governments should make full use of legislation, data regulations and documents to continue to accelerate the path of large-scale commercial exploration of autonomous driving. With the gradual maturity of the industry, the lack of superior law and the disunity of local legislation will affect the development of the whole industry, so it is necessary to give autonomous driving an appropriate legal status from the national level.
"Local legislation on autonomous driving should be further accelerated. Factors such as employment problems, mature algorithm technology and safety concerns brought about by industrial adjustment should not hinder the acceleration of local legislation." Yu Lingyun, a professor at Tsinghua University Law School and director of the Public Law Research Center, said.