China erleichtert den Test von autonomen Fahrzeugen auf öffentlichen Straßen.
China’s Ministry of Transport, along with other authorities, has said that from next month (link in Chinese) all provincial and city governments will have the authority to allow road-testing of autonomous vehicles in their areas. Before this, only a handful of cities (link in Chinese) had the authority to pilot road tests, beginning with Beijing four months ago.The notification says that companies applying for public road tests should have already tested the cars in closed roads and areas, and that a driver with at least three years of experience should always be in the driving seat and ready to take over if necessary. Firms have to record and store driving data for at least three years, and there’s also a time limit on the road test period of 18 months.China’s speeding up its backing for the development of “intelligent vehicles” (link in Chinese), which the new rules define as those capable of partially or fully driving themselves. That’s a marked change compared with just last year, when authorities fined Baidu’s CEO Robin Li after the firm’s executives drove an autonomous car in Beijing in July. China said in January that it wants these cars to make up half of new vehicles (link in Chinese) on the roads by 2020.
