Yu Yuanfan

aimee3031@126.com

REPRESENTATIVES of the self-driving car industry gathered at the 21st China Hi-Tech Fair to share their insights on the industry with the audience. Though doubts about the industry have yet to fade, representatives are optimistic about the industry’s future, especially in China.

Safety has always been the top concern when people talk about vehicles. Some have cast doubts on the safety of self-driving cars and wonder how they will react in the face of unexpected situations, for example a person who violates traffic rules and rushes out in front of it.

Liu Nianqiu, director of the Hardware Department at Deep-Route, said that self-driving cars are actually much safer than manned cars because they are good at calculating and forecasting, and perform strictly in accordance with directions. “It has programs to calculate and give directions about what it should do to avoid an accident. Additionally, experienced drivers tend to succumb to ‘trusting luck’ while driving, but machines don’t. They just carry out the directions given based on calculations, and they also react much faster than human brains. Of course machines may make mistakes, but people make mistakes too.”

Statistics show that the percentage of Chinese people who accept unmanned vehicles is much higher than in many developed countries, and people are also willing to pay higher fees for them. Du Hongwei, director for high-precision positioning technologies at Starcart, said that this, combined with the large number of self-driving car companies in China, is helping to advance the industry in China.

“The post-1990s are frequently exposed to new things. Their willingness to pay more for self-driving vehicles is a huge boost for car companies. Then we have a large number of self-driving car companies — competition drives technological updates and helps lower product costs. This will in turn contribute to the development of the industry,” Du said.