Alibaba given go-ahead to road test autonomous cars in Hangzhou

At the 2018 Computing Conference, Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group attained Hangzhou's first license for autonomous vehicle road test, which was the group's latest move in autonomous vehicle R&D following the unveiling of its self-driving car and the vehicle infrastructure cooperative strategy.

The road tests will reportedly be operated at China (Hangzhou) Artificial Intelligence Town, while Alibaba has not revealed when the tests will start. Up until now, China's three Internet giants, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (also known as the BATs), have all obtained the governmental permission to test their autonomous vehicles on roads.

According to Wang Gang, chief scientist of DAMO Academy AI lab, the group's self-driving R&D team has developed an intelligent system that can pinpoint objects round the clock. Besides, the system also contains a large-scale simulation platform on which over 100 thousand kilometers of road tests and simulation tests will be operated per day.

Wang Gang said that the cooperative work between vehicles and road infrastructures is crucial to truly implement autonomous driving technologies in China and the whole world. It will help enhance the driving safety with less cost. At the conference, Alibaba also announced that it plans to build a smart expressway by utilizing the intelligent vehicle infrastructure cooperative system.