Roadmap lays out path for connected vehicles

An updated technology roadmap on intelligent connected vehicles was released on Wednesday at the 2020 World Intelligent Connected Vehicles Conference in Beijing, outlining the development goals of China's intelligent connected vehicle industry by 2035.

The technology roadmap on intelligent connected vehicles will help support the government's autonomous driving industry planning, promote technological innovation in the industry, and point out the development direction and provide decision-making reference for the accelerated transformation and upgrading of China's automobile industry, said Li Keqiang, chief scientist of the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle Innovation Center, who released and interpreted the latest-version technology roadmap on Wednesday.

Compared with the last version, the technology roadmap 2.0 expands the target to 2035 and divides the application scenarios into four categories: urban roads, suburban roads, expressways and special roads, and classifies commercial vehicles into freight and passenger vehicles.

According to the new technology roadmap, by 2025, the market share of partially-autonomous-driving and conditionally-autonomous-driving vehicles will exceed 50 percent, and the highly-autonomous-driving cars will realize commercial applications in limited areas and specific scenarios.

By 2030, the sales volume of partially-autonomous-driving and conditionally-autonomous-driving vehicles will account for 70 percent of China's total automobile sales. And the highly-autonomous-driving cars will be widely used on expressways and have large-scale application on some urban roads, accounting for 20 percent of new cars sold by that year.

By 2035, the technology and industrial system of China's intelligent connected vehicles will be fully completed, with an improved industrial ecology and intelligent level of connected vehicles.

In addition, the new technology roadmap sets forth the aims of the application of the intelligent connected vehicles.

According to the technology roadmap, by 2025, 50 percent of new cars in China will be equipped with the wireless network connection technology cellular vehicle-to-everything, or the C-V2X. And the C-V2X is expected to achieve a popularization by 2030.