New test road for 'intelligent' vehicles

With the launch of Apollo Park in Jiading's Shanghai International Automobile City, Internet giant Baidu began intelligent connected vehicle tests at the park in July.

Its self-driving cars drive on the open test roads at a speed of 50-60 kilometers per hour and can automatically complete a series of operations such as stopping at a red light, turning right or left and avoiding non-motorized vehicles.

Baidu plans to use 200 ICVs at Apollo Park in the future, according to Li Chenyu, a senior solution manager of the company.

Jiading has put into operation a 315-kilometer-long open test road for intelligent connected vehicles since 2015, while the first batch of companies including Baidu, Auto X and Poni.ai have tested for around 1.11 million kilometers.

In Apollo Park, there are centers for autonomous driving and vehicle-road collaborative R&D, maintenance and testing and remote big data cloud control, covering the entire process of autonomous driving vehicles from R&D to testing.

In the core area of Yuanxiang Lake in Jiading New City, the construction of the Smart Road Demonstration Zone on Baiyin Road is underway. In the 371-meter demonstration section, hardware equipment such as boxes that manage roadside information, poles that collect road information, smart signal lights and zebra crossings have been essentially completed.