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For the last few years, the automotive industry in China has been made tremendous strides, heading for innovative strategy to disrupt the market. The country has now signalled its intention to drive the development of autonomous vehicles when 11 central ministerial-level authorities jointly issued the Strategy on Developing Smart Vehicles. The authorities involve the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The development strategy demonstrates that the China is pushing forward autonomous vehicles. Earlier, in January 2018, the country’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued a draft Strategy for Innovation and Development of Intelligent Vehicles for public comment.

This time, the country’s ambitious blueprint is aimed at developing its own standards for autonomous vehicles by 2025. According to the blueprint, the country will basically finish its set of standards for autonomous vehicles covering such aspects as technological innovation, infrastructure, legislation, supervision and network safety by 2025. The blueprint further noted that some regions in the country will have full access to the LTE-V2X wireless network for vehicles and the new-generation wireless network for vehicles, the 5G-V2X, will be gradually adopted in some cities and expressways by the same year.

Reportedly, some Chinese and foreign companies such as Audi, Changan, and GM have been testing V2X technologies in China over the past few years. And according to blueprint, China is anticipated to build a complete and sound set of standards for autonomous vehicles between 2035 and 2050. Additionally, it said the country has strategic advantages to build autonomous vehicles.

A member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Li Jun said in addition to the automotive sector, many industries will benefit from the new strategy, including artificial intelligence chips, sensors, data and smart transport. Considering a report from Beijing News, the China’s automotive driving market is worth 170 billion yuan (US$24.31 billion) in 2020.

Several startups last week saw their stock prices climb. Chinese startup Uisee, which focused on algorithm and systems for high-level autonomous driving, completed its series B funding round, led by investors including German industrial giant Bosch. One another startup Pony.ai also raised US$462 million that has said to use to accelerate commercialisation of its autonomous driving technology.

As part of this newly issued strategy on smart vehicles, its key mission is to establish open technology innovation system. The strategy emphasizes the aim to make innovations in key fundamental technologies including complex system architecture, environment perception, intelligent decision control, human-computer interaction and human-computer co-driving, vehicle-road interaction and cybersecurity, high-precision spatiotemporal benchmark services and basic maps for intelligent vehicles.