Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (Beijing E-Town) is home to more than 20 high-growth companies in the autonomous driving sector, and boasts a vibrant atmosphere for innovation on intelligent-connected vehicles.
Located in the industrial innovation park for intelligent-connected vehicles in Beijing E-Town, SemiDrive has achieved large scale production of intelligent seats and control systems with an output of over 5 million units, serving more than 90% of Chinese homegrown equipment manufacturers as well as several international carmakers. Since establishing its presence in E-Town last year, the company has worked with a number of upstream and downstream enterprises, continuing to leverage its strengths in accordance with local resources.
Pony.ai, a company specialized in autonomous mobility, has accumulated more than 31 million kilometers of autonomous driving since establishing an R&D center in Beijing in 2017. The company has also explored self-driving freight trucks, successfully operating such vehicles from Beijing to Tianjin. By the end of March, Pony.ai logistics operations exceeded 1.5 million kilometers, transporting about 25 million ton-kilometers of goods.
These companies are an epitome of E-Town's rapid development of autonomous driving sector. According to an official of the Office of the Beijing High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone, focusing on new energy intelligent vehicle manufacturing, E-Town now boasts two major vehicle production bases (Beijing Benz and Xiaomi Car), and has formed a complete eco-system for the autonomous driving industry.
E-Town has achieved integrated coverage of vehicle-road-cloud-network-map within a 160-square-kilometer area, with eight major scenario demonstrations, deploying over 800 vehicles. The area has issued road test notifications for 30 auto companies, with a total autonomous driving mileage of about 30 million kilometers.
Through policy innovation and scenario innovation, the entire Chinese capital aims to become a testing ground for global autonomous driving companies, facilitate the testing of new products and technologies, and accelerate technological breakthroughs and application innovations in the industry, said the official of the municipal self-driving office.
Beijing E-Town will also further improve the business environment, increase innovation investment, and attract outstanding enterprises and talent to advance the high-quality development of the autonomous driving industry, the official said.