On August 2, Mercedes-Benz announced that it had become the first foreign automaker to be approved to conduct Level 4 (L4) urban and highway autonomous driving tests on designated roads in Beijing, China. Previously, Mercedes-Benz was approved to conduct L3 autonomous driving tests in Beijing at the end of 2023.
L4 is considered fully autonomous driving with no human driver intervention required, although a driver can still request control.
Mercedes-Benz previously stated that since 2021, the company has been continuously conducting testing in a closed environment in China. The focus of the local R&D work includes adapting its autonomous vehicle system to China’s road infrastructures such as traffic signs and markings, construction areas, bus lanes, and variable lanes, as well as algorithm optimizations.
Two retrofitted Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans will be used as L4 autonomous driving test vehicles, equipped with a variety of sensors, including lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and cameras.
In recent years, the popularity of autonomous driving vehicles has been rising. The city of Hangzhou in China has opened 3,474 km2 of eight urban districts as testing sites for self-driving vehicles, accounting for more than 20% of the city’s area; Shenzhen announced the addition of 43 new roads, bringing the city’s total open road mileage for autonomous driving to 944 km; Beijing has opened its first high-speed rail station for autonomous driving testing.
In Beijing’s high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone, there are L4 unmanned delivery vehicles, unmanned shuttle buses, street sweepers, patrol cars, and more than 800 other autonomous driving vehicles for various scenarios. This zone was officially established in September 2020 to focus on the five major systems of “vehicle-road-cloud-network-map” to promote the implementation of L4+ autonomous driving. Currently, there are more than 20 autonomous driving companies and automakers in this zone, including Baidu, Pony, BAIC, Didi, WeRide, Auto-X, Neolix, JD, Meituan Qingtian Truck, Trunk, QCraft, SenseTime, and Foton.
Source: Sina Finance, 36 kr
