Shanghai launches 560-km roads for ICV road tests by 2020

By the end of 2020, Shanghai had opened up a total of 243 roads that spans 559.87 kilometers for the road tests of intelligent-connected vehicles (ICVs), according to a report recently issued by the Shanghai Municipal Transportation Commission.

The roads opened for ICV road tests are mainly located at Jiading, Lingang, Fengxian and Pudong New districts. The government plans to build an “innovation pilot zone for Level 3+ autonomous driving” in Jiading and has deployed there 166 roads spanning 315 kilometers in total within three years. Lingang district aims to develop a demonstration zone themed the future transport models with 41 roads spanning 118.2 kilometers launched by 2020. Besides, the demonstration zones in Fengxian and Jinqiao, Pudong New Area have contained 24 (97.37km) and 12 (29.3km) roads, focusing on the full-fledged mobility chain for intelligent driving and the integrated traffic infrastructures respectively.

As of December 2020, Shanghai government also had granted 22 companies 152 license plates in total that allow them to carry out ICV road tests or pilot applications, according to the report. The permits were issued to 129 new energy vehicles (NEVs)/ clean energy vehicles and 23 fossil fuel-powered vehicles. Among them, 105 vehicles have been deployed into the demonstration for ICVs.

In 2020, cumulative mileage of ICV road tests for Shanghai amounted to 397,000 kilometers. In terms of annual testing distance, the top three companies were SAIC Hongyan, Didi Chuxing and TuSimple, seeing their vehicles drive for 102,061 km, 90,688 km and 32,861km respectively.