Self-driving cars with passengers make test runs in North China

SHIJIAZHUANG - A total of 30 self-driving vehicles carrying passengers have made test runs on Wednesday in the city of Cangzhou, North China's Hebei province.

The vehicles, equipped with Baidu Apollo autonomous driving systems, ran on the test roads with a total length of up to 114 km in the Cangzhou Economic and Development Zone.

In recent years, Cangzhou has speeded up its efforts to develop emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, intelligent vehicles and transport.

In October, a total of 30 license plates were given to the intelligent connected vehicles (ICV) of Chinese artificial intelligence pioneer Baidu by the government of Cangzhou.

This was the first time that Baidu's ICVs were issued license plates for road tests with passengers in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

China allowed local governments to arrange road tests for ICVs, which cover different degrees of autonomous driving, in April 2018. An increasing number of cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, have issued license plates for road tests of ICVs.