Baidu conducts L4 autonomous driving test in Xiongan New Area

Chinese Internet giant Baidu has conducted road tests for three L4 autonomous vehicles in Xiongan New Area, Hebei Province, the company announced on May 23.   

Baidu dispatched a technical test team to debug and optimize the tested vehicles according to their real-time performance. Besides, all tested vehicles have passed strict qualification inspection and are equipped with human drivers to ensure a safety test. Meanwhile, the company has bought insurance for each tested vehicle in accordance with the road test regulation.

Baidu is ambitious to build Xiongan New Area into a city free from traffic congestion and facilitated with advanced intelligent traffic management system instead of great amount of human resources. In the near future, it will explore the mobility modes here that focus on intelligent public transportation system primarily and self-driving private vehicles for assistance.

At the Digital China Summit in April, Baidu and the bus maker King Long opened a trial ride of the “Apolong”, China's first self-driving microcirculation bus co-developed by the two companies, to the public. Reportedly, the “Apolong” will be mass produced this year.

Besides, Baidu has obtained the governmental licenses that allow it to road test the autonomous vehicles from several cities, such as Beijing, Fujian, Chongqing, etc.    

Baidu and Xiongan New Area have signed a strategic cooperation agreement in December last year to develop the new economic zone into a smart city powered by intelligent transport, the application of conversational AI, and cloud computing infrastructure.