Prominent industry players attracted to science city

Zhongguancun Science City's autonomous driving demonstration is attracting industry leading enterprises which are striving to make breakthroughs in the emerging and related fields.

Among them is Pony.ai, an autonomous driving startup, which was one of the first companies to conduct road tests in the demonstration zone. It tested online ride-hailing services for its autonomous cars.

This year, the company was approved to test self-driving cars with passengers on board, becoming the first startup company in Beijing.

"The traffic scenarios in Beijing are diverse and public road testing allows us to use real-traffic scenarios to improve the technology," a spokesperson at Pony.ai said. "Autonomous driving is similar to a person learning to drive and it requires testing on real roads to master the relevant skills."

Pony.ai, a unicorn startup valued at over $5.3 billion, settled in the Zhongguancun No 1 building in the science park last year.

Zhongguancun has many resources dedicated to the development of intelligent driving, and the expanding area for road tests allows to the company to grow, learn and develop technologies faster, the manager said.

Chinese tech company Baidu has also located its autonomous driving division to Zhongguancun.

In October, Baidu's Apollo Go robotaxi, an autonomous driving taxi service, was opened to the public in Beijing, making Baidu the first company to carry passengers in autonomous vehicles in the capital.

Passengers can hail the autonomous cabs free of charge via Baidu Maps or the Apollo Go app, according to the company.

Marked achievements in autonomous driving have been made in Beijing, and it is a benchmark of the industry in China, an executive at Baidu said.

Baidu's Apollo Go robotaxi service is currently available in Beijing, Changsha in Hunan province and Cangzhou in Hebei province.

Between 2018-19, Apollo Go conducted 893,900 km in road tests in Beijing alone, the equivalent of traveling around the Earth more than 22 times.

Self-driving technology is expected to be widely applied commercially in the next five years, Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Baidu, said at the Baidu World 2020, the company's annual flagship technology conference held in September.

Intelligent infrastructure based on a vehicle-road coordination system is expected to improve traffic efficiency by 15-30 percent, thus potentially bringing about a 2.4-4.8 percent increase in the economy alone, according to Li.

Last year, Zhongguancun Science City launched the Zhongguancun Intelligent Network Auto Frontier Technology Innovation Center, as part of its efforts to promote autonomous driving.

The center was established in the demonstration zone area of the science city and focuses on the innovation and applications in intelligent networks, 5G communication and navigation satellite systems.

The center is hoped to attract related high-tech companies in Haidian and help to build an innovation ecology to provide better technological service, an official at the center said.

"The center will utilize the science and innovation advantages of the science city to promote the commercialization of innovation achievements in Haidian district," the official said.

To provide high-tech companies with better service, the center will support more public laboratories and service platforms, and form collaborative research and development industrial clusters in the zone, he said.