On March 29th 2019, Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport published the “2018 Autonomous Vehicle Testing Report in Beijing”, which was the first ever road test report published by government in China.
The report disclosed the total tested mileage made by more than 50 vehicles from eight companies that have been granted licenses to test self-driving cars in Beijing. The distinction between Beijing’s report and DMV’s California report was the previous one did not provide the disengagements rate.
The report was in Chinese only (link). So the released fleet size and tested mileage were translated by SA as below:
| Company Name |
Number of Vehicles With
Testing Permission |
Number of Vehicles
Operating on the Road |
Tested Mileage
(Kilometres) |
| Baidu |
45 |
45 |
139887.7 |
| NIO |
2 |
1 |
2415.3 |
| BAIC |
1 |
0 |
235.1 |
| Daimler |
2 |
2 |
476 |
| Pony.AI |
2 |
2 |
10132.9 |
| Tencent |
1 |
1 |
259 |
| DIDI |
2 |
2 |
78.1 |
| Audi |
1 |
1 |
80.9 |
| Total |
56 |
54 |
153565 |
Internet giant Baidu dominated in all numbers, accounting 80% of the fleet size and 90% of total mileage. With its headquarters in Beijing and close relationship with city government, Baidu clearly had a first mover advantages.
Compared with Californian regulations, Beijing had a more conservative/safety conscious approach on testing AVs on public road. Started from February 2018, only 123 kilometres of public road have been opened for AVs test, and all of them were located in suburban area. In order to get the permission to travel on public road, each vehicle should have been tested for at least 5000 kilometres in a closed testing field and then passed a safety check hold by government officials.
From the report, Beijing government indicated that they planned to increase the length of public AVs test road up to 2000 kilometres by 2022. They also planned to further improve their testing methodologies by adding simulation technologies in the process.