"Now, travelling, catering, and express delivery are all inseparable from 'unmanned vehicles', and autonomous driving has been deeply integrated into my daily life," said Du Lijuan, a resident in Beijing E-Town. She was afraid of self-driving vehicles a year ago but is now enjoying the convenience brought by self-driving vehicles. What happened in this time to change his mind?

In Sept 2020, Beijing E-Town took the lead in building the world's first network-connected cloud-controlled high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone. According to the steps of stage 1.0 (test environment construction), stage 2.0 (small-scale deployment), stage 3.0 (scale deployment and scenario expansion), and stage 4.0 (promotion and scenario optimization), it will form a mature model before gradually expanding to other areas of Beijing. 

In April 2021, relying on the high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone, the Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pilot Zone was established.

"At first, I thought these self-driving cars would be stupid and not as flexible as manual operation." said Du.

"But, there are more and more such self-driving vehicles on the road. Slowly, I found that such cars are very smart, not only is the speed comparable to that of normal human-driven vehicles, but the operation is also accurate. Now, I often take a Robotaxi (intelligent connected passenger car), which is safe, convenient and saves money." She added.

Up to now, 60 square kilometers of Beijing E-Town has been covered with 329 pieces of digital intelligent intersection infrastructure. 

More than 300 high-level autonomous vehicles of various types have been regularly tested and commercialized in the demonstration area.

A total of 185 passenger license plates, 124 unmanned sales vehicle codes, 5 autonomous commercial vehicle license plates, and 5 number plates of connected passenger buses have been issued.

The accumulated mileage of autonomous driving in Beijing E-Town has now reached approximately 5.9 million kilometers, which is equivalent to nearly 150 times around the world.