The city of Shanghai in East China will carry out commercial operations of self-driving smart heavy trucks on its 32-kilometer sea-crossing Donghai Bridge – after successfully carrying out a series of tests recently.

That's according to local media, which reported that it will be a first in China that will blaze a trail for the commercial operations of unmanned self-driving vehicles across the country.

Smart heavy trucks carry out unmanned operations tests on Donghai Bridge. [Photo/WeChat ID: shlgguanweihui]

Test operator Shanghai Utopilot Technology Co Ltd announced details of the tests on Dec 29.

It said that its operations test project for the 5G+L4 smart heavy truck – driven under high-speed along Shanghai's Donghai Bridge – had successfully completed technical verifications for a five-truck formation with three unmanned trucks in the middle.

The company added that it would soon start the first unmanned self-driving test and operations on a public road.

As a national key research and development project and a top project in Shanghai, 5G+L4 smart heavy trucks undertook quasi commercial operations on Donghai Bridge in 2020.

On July 18, with the implementation of an automatic driving test lane on the bridge, the new operations test was officially launched and made good progress.

The cabin of a 5G+L4 smart heavy truck. [Photo/WeChat ID: shlgguanweihui]

A phase-one pressure test for two vehicles in formation with security guards on board was completed. In the second phase, the testing of unmanned driving on the bridge was launched and the operating mileage under the unmanned driving status exceeded 4,000 kilometers.

The closed field test of the five-vehicle formation with three unmanned vehicles was completed in the third-phase test, which provided comprehensive practical experience for unmanned self-driving.

Insiders said that Utopilot's pacesetting move to launch  regular unmanned self-driving tests and operations will accelerate the large-scale application of automatic driving in public transport and public services – such as in ports, along trunk lines and for use in public sanitation.

They said this would promote unmanned operations across all sorts of different scenarios. It is also expected to be greatly significant in improving efficiency, reducing costs and in contributing to the building of smart ports – in the process transforming China into a much stronger transportation nation.

Taking Donghai Bridge as an example, intelligent heavy trucks with L4 automatic driving capability can carry out five-truck formation automatic driving operations. This is expected to  free up the bottlenecks in offshore sea-crossing transportation, ease the traffic pressure on Donghai Bridge caused by the doubling of throughput, improve traffic efficiency by 40 percent and save at least 80 percent in labor costs.

In 2023, plans are for Utopilot to take the lead in carrying out unmanned commercial operations at main venues.

Moreover, the company will work out a mode for commercial operations for automatic driving and will help formulate a Shanghai standard that can be promoted in other areas.