The Automated Freeway
China is looking to prepare their roadways for self-driving vehicles, and their solution to the problem of mixing manually-piloted traffic with self-driving units could literally pave the way for Tesla’s FSD rollout in the country.
Tesla has been working hard to prepare for the potential debut of their Full Self-Driving beta - something that is still hanging in that air. At last check, Tesla has been setting up a China-based operations team that would be interfacing with local government authorities to help the process along.
China has some very strict driving laws that don’t yet have any provisions for autonomous driving vehicles, and so whether or not Tesla’s FSD program is able to operate on Chinese roads depends entirely on how quickly their regulations can be updated.
However, it’s not like Chinese authorities are against the idea - in fact they’ve already been testing an entire infrastructure system for Self Drivign vehicles!
Back in early July, the government of Suzhou in Jiangsu province began upgrading a local stretch of road to become a “smart expressway”. For the moment, this 56 kilometer stretch of road is mostly a laboratory - filled with over 270 sets of laser and milimeter-wave radars, cameras, and antennas to assist in metric gathering.
Eventually however, it looks like this sort of solution might be used across the country - solving one of the biggest issues for self-driving vehicles on North American roads: mixing with manual and pedestrian traffic. People tend to act in erratic ways that are difficult for automated systems to predict, so a dedicated roadway sounds like it would be a great option.
Currently, the road is marked as being usable only for level 4 autonomous driving vehicles - which Tesla’s FSD is not, only considered about a level 2.
Currently, there are only a couple of companies even testing Level 4 systems - and only in low-speed environments. However, China’s testing of their current stretch of road requires the use of systems that can handle lane changes, ramp entry, and overtaking - all of which are already in the FSD’s capabilities.
Who knows, with some work, China might relax their requirements for the use of this expressway. It’s a great solution to traffic mixing with non-self-drivign cars, and seems like a much safer route - if a bit expensive. Creating a whole new bunch of infrastructure just for autonomous vehicles is definitely not something you’d see in North America at least.