Beijing permits self-driving vehicle testing on expressways

Driverless cars will soon hit expressways for testing in Chinese capital Beijing, as the municipal authority has approved the gradual opening of several expressway sections for unmanned vehicles. A 10-km expressway between Beijing's fifth and sixth ring roads will be opened for such testings first. Six other expressway sections will be opened later to add another 143-km stretch to the city's high-speed testing roads for autonomous vehicles, according to a work group overseeing the city's innovation for mobility intelligence. Jiang Guangzhi, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, said that the high-speed test of self-driving vehicles has a high entry threshold. Testing vehicles should be equipped with relevant devices and connected to a cloud computing platform for real-time data transmission to ensure the safety of expressway traffic.