The U.S. may be leading the race to design Driverless cars.
But China’s in hot pursuit, with a top-down plan to make them a common sight on the roads, long before drivers in the West start letting go of the wheel.
Reuters’ Jake Spring reports from the Beijing auto show, where self-driving tech is getting a lot of attention.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) REUTERS CORRESPONDENT, JAKE SPRING, SAYING:
“So China is actually behind in the technology right now by perhaps by a couple of years. What could put China ahead is the regulation- there’s so many legal, regulatory matters and standards yet to be set that in the U.S. and Europe, they’re often left to themselves, automakers are left to themselves to agree on them. In China, they’re planning to put out a roadmap that would say- here are the standards, here are the regulations. And then once all the automakers line up say, they all have to use a certain language to communicate between cars, then all the industry would line up and then they could potentially line up and implement it pretty quickly.”
As well as being a cool step forward for technology, there are a lot of social factors pointing towards a bright driverless future for China.
(SOUNDBITE) (English) REUTERS CORRESPONDENT, JAKE SPRING, SAYING:
“In Shanghai and Beijing and other large areas, congestion has already reached an extreme level so coordinating cars in a more fluid pattern could really help relieve congestion. Second, there’s a huge number of traffic deaths in China, at least 200,000 a year. And a large number of accidents are driver error, so autonomous cars would remove that problem.”
Chinese Internet giant Baidu plans to launch driverless buses in the next two years…
And Ford’s local partner Chang’an just drove semi-autonomous cars across the country – putting them about on par with the latest Tesla.
The post China’s Driverless Cars Steps up a gear appeared first on Billionaires Newswire.
This post first appeared on Billionaires Newswire - Lifestyle & Luxury Tourism, please read the originial post: here
