On July 3, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on its website a list of the first batch of pilot cities for the application of "vehicle-road-cloud integration" for intelligent connected vehicles. Twenty cities or city combos including Changsha made the list, marking another step towards the city's development into a "city of intelligent driving".

A passenger hails a driverless taxis in Changsha.

The first batch includes super first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, as well as provincial capitals such as Changsha, Wuhan, and Ji'nan, and prefecture-level cities such as Shiyan and Ordos. The MIIT, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and the Ministry of Transport require local provincial authorities to increase policy support for these pilot cities, strengthen follow-up inspections of the pilot work, and summarize the work progress, experience and practices, and typical cases in a timely manner.

A self-driving retail vehicle is seen in Changsha.

This is the fifth national "licence" that Changsha has obtained in the field of intelligent connected vehicles, after it was designated as the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle (Changsha) Testing Area, the National Hunan (Changsha) Internet of Vehicles Pilot Zone, the National Intelligent Connected Vehicle Quality Supervision and Inspection Center (Hunan), and a national pilot city for the coordinated development of intelligent urban infrastructure and intelligent connected vehicles. 

Changsha is home to nearly 400 upstream and downstream enterprises in the finished automobile, algorithm, chip, big data, communication, and navigation industries, with an annual output value of more than 80 billion yuan. China's first open-road demonstration line for level-3 autonomous driving buses has been put into operation in Changsha, and more than 2,000 buses have been transformed into intelligent networked ones.

Looking ahead, Changsha will adhere to the construction principle of "same architecture, unified standards, interconnected business, safety and reliability", exploring ways to implement the "vehicle-road-cloud integration" technology and bolster the large-scale application of intelligent connected vehicles in a 1,200-sqm pilot area of the city, and promoting the output value of "vehicle-road-cloud integration" related industries to exceed 100 billion yuan.