Hengqin, an island in the southern city of Zhuhai that serves as the gateway to the gambling hub of Macau, has opened its entire road network to driverless car road tests, becoming the latest Chinese district to embrace autonomous driving technology.
The Hengqin Cooperation Zone, a priority development area aimed at fostering economic cooperation between Macau and Guangdong province, made 330 kilometres of road available for autonomous driving tests as it joins efforts to turn the Greater Bay Area into a hub for self-driving tech.
The district had been gradually opening up parts of the road network to autonomous driving since September 2022, when it made the first 22km available for such tests. Its fourth approval on Friday covered the final 135km of the network.
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What’s it like to ride in China’s AI-driven robotaxi?
What’s it like to ride in China’s AI-driven robotaxi?
By opening up the entire road network, which covers “a variety of traffic scenarios”, Hengqin aims to assist self-driving car manufacturers in “collecting more comprehensive road data to optimise their self-driving algorithms”, according to a statement posted to the cooperation zone’s official WeChat account.
Additionally, this move is expected to “attract more self-driving car enterprises and research and development institutions to settle in Hengqin, which will form an intelligent driverless car industry cluster in the cooperation zone”.
A growing list of Chinese cities have been expanding options for companies to test autonomous driving. Shenzhen, another Guangdong city, is one of the pioneers in robotaxi services. The city has been testing autonomous taxi services since 2021.
Search engine giant Baidu’s robotaxi service Apollo Go has been tested in Shenzhen’s Nanshan and Pingshan districts. AutoX, another self-driving start-up, has also operated public robotaxi services in Pingshan.
The southern tech hub also plans to have a fleet of 20 driverless buses on the roads of Qianhai district by the end of the year, covering subway stations, commercial and business districts, industrial parks, residential areas and tourism sites.
Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, capital of central Hubei province, have all allowed the testing of self-driving cars.
Beijing allows autonomous-car makers – including Baidu, Pony.ai, WeRide and AutoX – to test their products mainly in the southern Daxing district. Services include shuttling passengers between Beijing Daxing International Airport and the hi-tech Yizhuang area.
Still, the monetisation of robotaxis has a long way to go in the country, as companies rely on heavily subsidising these services to attract users. The expanding roll-out has also drawn some consternation among those worried about job security. Taxi drivers in Wuhan recently petitioned the city’s transport authority regarding the popularity of the new Apollo Go service.
