December 13 morning news, the California Traffic Management Bureau (DMV) fully unmanned autonomous driving road test license list does not have the name of the pony Zhixing (Pony.ai), what happened to the leading manufacturer of the autonomous driving industry?
In the list of driverless testing permits on the California Traffic Management Bureau's official website, Sina Technology found that there was no longer the name of Pony Zhixing. The list originally included eight manufacturers, all of whom were technological leaders in the industry. Chinese and American technology companies are equally divided among them, including leading U.S. manufacturers such as Waymo and Cruise, as well as Chinese companies such as Apollo (Baidu) and Xiaoma Zhixing.
According to the California Traffic Management Authority's website, the Autonomous Vehicle test licenses they currently issue include three broad categories. The first is a Testing with a Driver, where a safety officer can take over the vehicle in an emergency. The second type is the fully unmanned autonomous driving test license, unmanned vehicles can be tested on the road without a safety officer in the main driving position, which means that the automatic system of the car is completely in unmanned mode in a specific environment, and there is no one in the driving position.
At the end of 2018, Waymo became the first company to receive a California Traffic Management Authority unmanned autonomous driving test license, followed by seven companies that applied for this license. The third category is the Deployment Permit, which was launched last November, and is currently held only by Three Autonomous Driving Companies: Cruise, Nuro and Waymo.
Why is there no pony zhixing in the list of fully unmanned autonomous driving license holders? Sina Technology inquired about the unmanned vehicle test accident report on the official website of the California Vehicle Authority and found an accident report. This accident report website has a detailed accident of each unmanned vehicle, but the vast majority of them are passive accidents that have been scratched by other vehicles.
According to the report, at 10:50 a.m. on October 28, Xiaoma Zhixing's unmanned vehicle based on the Hyundai electric vehicle Kona was tested on the road in Fremont, Bay Area, where the headquarters is located, and after completing the right turn at the intersection, it quickly changed lanes to the left to make a left turn. However, after completing the lane change, the pony unmanned vehicle drove on the middle barrier of the road and hit a small road sign on the barrier, resulting in a slight damage to the front of the car (Moderate damage).
Sina Technology has repeatedly asked the California Vehicle Authority about the relevant situation, but as of the time of this writing, it has not received a response and explanation from the California Vehicle Authority on this matter. According to the accident report on the Vehicle Authority's website, after the accident, Xiaoma Zhixing immediately notified the Fremont Police Department of the specific situation, worked with the local road traffic department to repair the damaged road sign, and then submitted the accident report to the DMV within one working day.
Xiaoma Zhixing replied exclusively to Sina Technology, "Xiaoma Zhixing has always adhered to the principle of safety first. Previously, during the daily testing of the Pony Zhixing unmanned test vehicle in California, the United States, there was a slight collision, no personnel were injured, and no other vehicles were involved. After the accident, Xiaoma Zhixing immediately conducted a re-investigation of the incident and voluntarily stopped the unmanned test of autonomous driving in California. At the same time, Xiaoma Zhixing reported with the California DMV for the first time, and is still in close communication and cooperation. "
However, the withdrawal of the unmanned vehicle on-road test license plate does not affect the autopilot test license plate of Pony Zhixing's safety officer. This means that as long as it is equipped with safety officers, the unmanned vehicle of Pony Zhixing can still continue to be tested in California for normal public road testing. The full suspension of the unmanned autonomous driving test in California means that they have also temporarily withdrawn from the list.
The cumulative mileage of Pony's self-driving road test has approached 10 million kilometers, and it has obtained self-driving travel service test licenses from the California Vehicle Authority and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to provide self-driving taxi services in Fremont and Irvine, Southern California.
When Sina Technology searched the website of the California Vehicle Authority for test reports of various unmanned vehicles, it found some similar accidents. In June, when Waymo was testing a Robotaxi in San Francisco, he did not avoid passers-by when he turned left at the intersection, and directly pressed onto the scooter of passers-by, and the surface of the vehicle was scratched, but fortunately no one was injured. Obviously, this accident is much more serious than the pony Zhixing driving on the road teeth.
Immediately after the accident, Waymo also suspended its driverless car operations in San Francisco, but did not fully suspend all operations and testing in California. The California Traffic Authority did not subsequently take any measures. However, Waymo later explained that the vehicle was in manual driving mode when the accident occurred and was in the process of leaving autonomous driving mode.
Perhaps the accident of Apple's unmanned car is more similar to that of Pony Zhixing this time. On September 27 this year, when apple's self-driving car was tested on the road in Sunnyvale, Silicon Valley, it hit the curb at a speed of 21 kilometers per hour when it turned right at the intersection, causing the bumper to be misaligned. Similarly, no one was injured, and no other vehicles were involved, because it was very minor, and Apple did not ask the police to come to the scene to check, but only submitted an accident report to the California Vehicle Authority. Apple didn't stop testing on the road either.
Like the accident of Apple's unmanned vehicle, the accident of the Xiaoma Zhixing unmanned vehicle did not injure anyone, nor did it have contact with any vehicle pedestrians, why did they immediately take the initiative to completely suspend the fully unmanned automatic driving on the road test? Of course, there are reasons for The Pony Zhixing itself to treat technology carefully, but on the other hand, it is also directly related to the gradual tightening of the unmanned vehicle regulatory environment in California and even the United States.
For the past decade, Silicon Valley, California, has been the Ground Zero of the global autonomous driving industry. It not only gives birth to leading enterprises in the autonomous driving industry, but also attracts global autonomous driving companies to recruit talents to engage in research and development and testing. In order to actively encourage technological innovation and promote the development of this cutting-edge technology industry, California and even the US federal government are working hard to create an open operating environment.
However, as the industry has gradually prospered and grown, more and more autonomous vehicles have been tested and even operated on the road, and there have been some road traffic accidents involving assisted driving and autonomous driving in the past few years, especially the many casualties of Tesla's AutoPilot system, which has aroused public concern and regulatory attention. In this context, U.S. and California regulators are also gradually adjusting their previous regulatory stances, evaluating assisted driving and autonomous driving technologies in a more rigorous and cautious manner, while preparing for relevant regulatory legislation.
At the end of June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued new regulations requiring all L2 and more drivers of assisted driving and autonomous driving to provide a report within one day of the accident and update the accident report within 10 days. Obviously, regulators are paying more and more attention to the technical safety of autonomous vehicles.
Tesla's driver assistance system, which has the largest number of vehicles and the most accidents, has become the focus of NHTSA's supervision. Over the past few months, NHTSA has put pressure on Tesla. In August, NHTSA announced an official investigation into Tesla's accidents involving assisted driving systems since 2016. In September, NHTSA required Tesla to submit data on all vehicles related to the accident. In October, NHTSA publicly questioned Tesla why it did not officially recall autopilot software updates for assisted driving. In November, NHTSA officially launched an investigation into Full Self-Driving test software in a Tesla car accident.
Perhaps the gradual tightening of the regulatory environment is not a bad thing for the autonomous driving industry. Under constant pressure from NHTSA, Tesla announced earlier this month a recall of 12,000 Teslas manufactured after 2017 because a bug in assisted driving software could trigger a false crash warning triggering automatic emergency braking. NHTSA's investigation into Tesla is still ongoing.
Autonomous driving is undoubtedly the most exciting cutting-edge technology of this era, bringing earth-shaking changes to the convenience and safety of human travel. Survey data from the University of Michigan's Transportation Institute shows that the global traffic fatality rate is currently 18 per 100,000 people, most of which are caused by human factors. This means that the future popularization of autonomous driving technology is expected to avoid most of these traffic accidents. Because autonomous vehicles that integrate various sensor technologies such as cameras, millimeter waves, and lidar, the perception and prediction ability of the road environment are much higher than those of humans, and there will be no traffic violations caused by human luck or fatigue.
Of course, the current autonomous driving technology, whether it is a sensor or an algorithm, is still far from perfect and perfect, let alone foolproof. But over the past few years, hundreds of self-driving companies around the world have been testing day in and day out in a variety of road environments around the world, including Uber, which has had traffic fatalities, Waymo has had crashes and injuries, and both have occurred in Phoenix, Arizona.
However, the public's attitude towards self-driving technology is clearly more demanding than that of human drivers, and more time and data are needed to build sufficient trust. The self-driving industry cannot tolerate radicalism and risk-taking, and any negligence and carelessness can come at a huge cost. Every accident can trigger public panic, not only may directly hit the prospects of a company, but also have the potential to drag down the development of the entire autonomous driving industry and market confidence.
Uber, which attracted attention in the industry a few years ago, is the best negative example. Uber brought their competitive culture of competing in the market into the realm of self-driving technology, resulting in bitter failures and unfortunate accidents.
In December 2016, the Uber unmanned fleet, which had just been in existence for a year, rushed to offer self-driving taxi testing services to the public on san Francisco's public roads without permission from the California Vehicle Authority. When the public played UberX in San Francisco, they unexpectedly found themselves sitting in an autonomous vehicle based on the Volvo XC90 (equipped with safety officers in the car). Apparently, the matter immediately caused a public sensation and media attention, which was the effect that Uber, which was actively financing and preparing to go public at the time, wanted to have, and they needed the vision of a driverless taxi to push up their own valuation.
After being warned by the California Vehicle Authority, Uber openly disagreed with the regulations; they had previously conducted a small internal test in Pittsburgh but were not open to the public. The California Vehicle Authority then directly revoked the registration of all 16 of Uber's driverless cars, forcing Uber to completely stop testing on the road in California and turn to Arizona for road testing; it was not until March 2017 that it applied for test licenses again.
Perhaps Uber's approach to autonomous driving portends their bitter consequences in this area. In March 2017, the Uber driverless car rolled over during testing in Arizona, when the car was in autonomous mode and fortunately there were no casualties. However, the accident did not arouse Uber's vigilance. In March 2018, when the Uber unmanned vehicle was driving at night in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, it failed to identify the pedestrians who suddenly crossed the road in front of it in time, and the safety officer did not take over the vehicle in time because of the distraction of playing mobile phones, resulting in the first and only traffic accident death case in the unmanned vehicle industry.
After the accident, Uber was jointly investigated by NHTSA and the U.S. National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB). Under intense pressure, Uber was forced to suspend self-driving vehicle on-road testing in Arizona, California, and Pennsylvania, and abandoned subsequent applications for test licenses (which could not be approved until the incident was fully investigated).
This accident not only brought a major blow to the development and deployment of Uber's unmanned vehicle business, seriously dampened Uber's ambitions in the field of unmanned vehicles, but also sounded the alarm for the entire autonomous driving industry. Two years later, Uber sold its self-driving unit, ATG, the industry's most radical company, in a thought-provoking way.
With the experience of Uber, coupled with the obvious tightening of the overall environment for unmanned vehicle supervision in the United States, this time Xiaoma Zhixing responded to the accident in the most conservative way, actively suspended the road test of unmanned autonomous vehicles, and worked with the California Vehicle Authority to review and investigate the accident, which is undoubtedly a realistic and prudent choice.
The large-scale commercial deployment of the unmanned vehicle, a cutting-edge technology industry, cannot tolerate any rashness and radicalism. Perhaps, the response attitude of the California Vehicle Authority and Xiaoma Zhixing this time is the standard procedure of this cutting-edge technology industry in the early stage of large-scale commercial deployment.