Recently, Beijing Public Transport Group, along with the Yizhuang Operating Company, Foton AUV and QCraft, obtained an intelligent connected vehicle road test permit issued by the Beijing Municipal High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone Office (BJHAD). 

They were also awarded road testing licenses by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau's Traffic Management Department. 

This is the first autonomous driving road testing license for large passenger cars in Beijing, signifying the transition from closed-course testing to open-road testing in real-world public transport scenarios.

A view of autonomous driving passenger buses [Photo/beijingetown.com.cn]

Among the key contributors, Beijing E-Town company- QCraft- provided the project's vehicles with a full-stack autonomous driving solution called "Driven-by-QCraft," bringing autonomous driving to life. 

Based on QCraft's Level 4 autonomous driving solution, vehicles can achieve 360-degree sensing with a sensing range of over 200 meters. 

This solution is tailored for fixed-route, low-speed scenarios. In addition to basic functions like pedestrian and vehicle avoidance, automatic lane changing, automatic turning, and traffic light recognition, it also enables the vehicles to handle various complex urban traffic situations, such as intersections with pedestrians and mixed traffic, merging vehicles from the rear, and more.

QCraft's intelligent connected bus, "Longzhou ONE," received road testing approval in Beijing last May and has been fully integrated into 2.0 BJHAD 2.0 C-V2X scenarios. 

This March, the demonstration zone officially opened the city's first autonomous driving minibus educational line, with "Longzhou ONE" by QCraft providing point-to-point shuttle services for teachers and staff commuting between two campuses of the High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, offering them a tech-savvy and futuristic travel experience.

"From empowering minibus models to large buses over 8 meters in length, with the approval for Beijing's high-level autonomous driving vehicles to hit the road for testing, we’re sparing no efforts to creating a model for autonomous driving operations in Beijing's public transport and laying the policy foundation for the commercialization of QCraft's autonomous driving solutions in new scenarios on a large scale." stated Cheng Xiuyuan, commercial vice president of QCraft.