China issues first national-level guideline on closed autonomous vehicle testing field construction

China's Ministry of Transport recently released China's first national-level guideline on the construction of enclosed autonomous vehicle testing field (hereinafter referred to as "the Guideline").

The Guideline is formulated to regulate the requirements of constructing enclosed autonomous vehicle testing fields and provide regional governments and enterprises with guidance on the autonomous vehicle testing field building, so as to supply better services for autonomous vehicle testing execution and relevant technology development.

Reportedly, there are many conspicuous issues in autonomous vehicle tests in China. For instance, China hasn't built a sound testing system yet that covers different levels of autonomous vehicle tests and lacks complete theories and methods on high-level autonomous vehicle testing. Besides, the current conditions hardly meet the demands for all kinds of testing subjects due to China's high population density, complex traffic environment as well as limited testing scenarios. Moreover, laws and regulations are urgently to be improved to support road tests.

Given the above elements, an efficient enclosed testing field plays an important role prior to open road tests. Based on theories and methods on autonomous vehicle testing, the government and relevant entities should simulate traffic scenarios and accumulate testing data as much as possible to bolster China's open road tests for autonomous vehicles.

On April 12, 2018, China's first national-level regulations on intelligent and connected vehicles road testing was jointly issued by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Transport. Since last December, some cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Changsha and Tianjin, etc., have successively released their regulations on autonomous vehicle road tests or issued licenses that permit autonomous vehicles to be tested on road.