New connected car testing zone comes up in Shanghai

The port town of Lingang in Shanghai’s Pilot Free Trade Zone will be home to a new testing and demonstration zone for connected vehicles, Future LAIV.

Future LAIV has been funded by Lingang's management committee. It comprises of a 26.1 kilometre open road test area, a 3 square kilometre closed testing area as well as data centres. The operations of the test-bed was thrown open on August 23.

Gu Changshi, Chief Planner for Industrial Development in the Shanghai New Lingang Area Development Administration, said that the test and demonstration area in Lingang is fully covered with 4G and 5G networks, and offers a larger area for testing and well-designed test scenarios. Compared to other testing ares, Lingang has better and much diverse road conditions, which will help simulate tests in various different scenarios.

Many autonomous vehicle manufacturers have been attracted to the 26.1-km open road available for testing. Lingang is home to Tesla's Chinese Gigafactory which is under construction as also other manufactures including SAIC Motors. Other start-up such as iFlytek, Horizon Robotics and Nullmax are also located in the area.

Lingang was recently added to Shanghai's free trade zone.