At Deeproute.ai’s exhibit hall, a media research team experienced the life-changing application of driverless technologies.
The company, focused on Level-4 autonomous driving, was established in Shenzhen in 2019 and is engaged in passenger robotaxis and cargo robotrucks.
On Aug. 1, its Robotaxi fleet drew global media attention when they were put into road tests in Futian, the first day Shenzhen’s regulations on driverless vehicle management, the first of this kind in China, took effect.
The company has conducted road tests spanning 7 million kilometers across the country through cooperation with Dongfeng Automobile and Caocao, an app-based car hailing platform. Vehicles equipped with Deeproute.ai technologies are expected to start mass production and enter the market around 2024-2025.
“Utilizing autonomous driving is to make people’s lives better. Last year, the Robotaxi fleet helped transport nucleic acid samples taken from people with yellow health codes to the Eighth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University,” said Tang Yao, marketing director of Deeproute.ai.
Tang cited another example where a visually impaired piano tuner named Yao Chuanxi, who lived in Shenzhen Hi-Tech Industrial Park, realized the dream of “driving” a driverless car in May last year.
“For the visually impaired, owning a driverless car is like having wings to fly. Their expectations made us realize that driverless technologies can solve more problems than we expected. We have adopted barrier-free setups in our designs and hope such technologies can help more people,” Tang said.
Recently, Shenzhen transport bureau opened the third batch of 53 road sections totaling 56 kilometers in Nanshan, Futian and Dapeng for road tests, bringing the total length to 201 kilometers.
Tang thought that the reason why Deeproute.ai was attracted to settle in the city is because of its complete industrial chain and policy support for development of driverless driving.
Autonomous driving, a strategic and emerging industry, has become a new growth point for Shenzhen’s innovation-driven development.