With the data support from Baidu Taxi, Xiaoqi can also obtain free data from Tesla.

Combining the two, the research and development progress of autonomous driving technology was much faster than Luo Fan expected, and Mr. Lei was also caught off guard.

Originally, Mr. Lei thought that the venue for internal testing could be found slowly and there was no need to rush.

But this technology progressed so fast that Mr. Lei had to put down some matters related to rice phones and began to search for suitable venues for internal testing across the country.

After more than a month of exploration, Mr. Lei finally selected City Y in Liaoning.

There are two reasons for choosing City Y. First, the city has a friendly attitude towards new energy vehicles and is willing to provide various policy supports. If the internal road test results are good, Shenyang will also give the opportunity for normal road tests.

Secondly, Shenyang belongs to the Northeast region, and the temperature in winter is relatively low. Many batteries of new energy vehicles are less durable as they get colder. What Mr. Lei thinks is that if it is no problem after testing in the Northeast, it should be no problem in winter in other places.

Already.

So Mr. Lei spent 50 million to buy a 30-year commercial use right to a piece of land in the suburbs of more than 90 acres.

This land is about 30k away from the city center of Y, almost to Fushun.

After Mr. Lei bought the right to use it, he immediately started planning the construction here.

At present, this place is just a large fence. Only in the southeast corner are a few half-renovated abandoned buildings. The rest of the place is an empty cement field.

According to people here, this place was originally intended to be a private small airport, but later the owner who developed it gave up for some reasons and chose to go to other cities, so it was abandoned.

Mr. Lei chose this land because of the abandoned buildings and cement floors here.

This can save a lot of time.

Shenyang attaches great importance to the new energy vehicle experimental zone project.

After all, this is considered a high-tech project, and there is actually a lack of such projects in the Northeast.

Therefore, the city also gave the green light for the subsequent construction of this land. It took more than half a month to complete the preliminary preparations. According to the plan, it will be officially completed in about two weeks.

Mr. Lei told Xiao Qi via email about the situation here, and Xiao Qi relayed it to Luo Fan.

After Luo Fan learned that Mr. Lei had basically secured the site, he decided to start internal road tests with the current technology.

After Xiao Qi conveyed Luo Fan's intention to Mr. Lei, Mr. Lei began to contact some domestic automobile manufacturers.

After some screening, Mr. Lei chose Changan Automobile to help customize the chassis of the car.

In this way, the new car chassis was delivered two weeks later, and the internal testing venue problem was also solved.

Mr. Lei originally wanted to invite Mr. Luo from Lai En Battery to come and see the site with his own eyes, but Mr. Luo from Lai En Battery refused and said that he had already agreed with Luo Fan that Luo Fan would inspect the site on his behalf.

After hearing this, Mr. Lei went to invite Luo Fan.

On Monday, April 16, 2018, Luo Fan took Su Qing to Shenyang by private plane.

This is Luo Fan's first time in the Northeast in his previous life.

In his previous life, Luo Fan actually traveled to many places, especially during the years when he worked for a game company affiliated with Penguin, he would follow the company's team to attend various press conferences every now and then.

But I have never been to the Northeast. I don’t know why various game conferences and face-to-face meetings seem to avoid the Northeast. It’s very strange.

"Mr. Luo, you are here!"

Mr. Lei's words interrupted Luo Fan's thoughts. After he and Mr. Lei exchanged pleasantries, Luo Fan and Su Qing took Mr. Lei's car to the internal testing site.

It took a total of 2 hours to get here from the airport in City Y. When Luo Fan and the others arrived, it was already noon.

Mr. Lei led Luo Fan to the canteen here and had lunch with the employees here.

Lunch is a buffet style, you can take a variety of dishes as you like, but don't waste it.

Luo Fan was not used to eating under such people's attention, so he didn't eat much. On the other hand, Su Qing and Mr. Lei both ate very well.

After finishing lunch, Mr. Lei led Luo Fan and Su Qing to the office and asked them to rest for a while.

At two o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Lei led Luo Fan and Su Qing to the internal testing site.

There are 30 vehicles parked here with only chassis and four wheels.

"Mr. Luo, this is Aaron Kwok, Gong Guo, he is the main person in charge of our internal testing." Mr. Lei said, pointing to a middle-aged man who looked to be in his early 40s.

"Hello, Gong Guo!" Luo Fan took the initiative to extend his hand.

Aaron Kwok stretched out his hand to shake Luo Fan's hand and said, "Hello, Mr. Luo! I've heard of you for a long time!"

"You're welcome, Mr. Guo. I would like to trouble you to introduce him to us today."

"No trouble, no trouble, Mr. Luo, Mr. Lei, these 30 cars use chassis that we specially customized from Changan Automobile.

The car's self-driving technology was provided by Mr. Lei, and we were responsible for assembling it into the car. Then there were laser sensors and microwave sensors around the car. We configured a total of 8 sets.

At this stage, what we are mainly testing is whether there are any obvious vulnerabilities in the runtime programs of these cars under different scenarios," said Aaron Kwok.

"The cement floor, gravel road, various obstacles, and moving dummies in the venue are all for testing the interior of the car?" Luo Fan asked.

"Yes."

"So Gong Guo, what's the speed of these cars?" Su Qing asked.

"The current maximum speed is 20 miles per hour, because at this stage the main purpose is to find loopholes in vehicle driving and to facilitate observation, the speed is limited to 20 miles per hour. This makes it easier to stop immediately when abnormal situations occur, and also allows observers to be more precise

Good observation vehicle.”

"So that's it, then are these cars powered by batteries?" Su Qing then asked.

"Yes, it's the battery. The battery we are currently using is an experimental product sent by Lion Battery. While we are testing the autonomous driving technology, we are actually testing this battery."

"How is the overall driving effect?" Luo Fan asked.

This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! "Not bad, there have been no accidents so far, and the sophistication of this autonomous driving technology should be no worse than Tesla.

However, the integration between batteries and autonomous driving technology is not very good. Logically speaking, the performance of this battery should be stronger than most batteries on the market.

But after our testing, our current maximum range is only half of the estimated range.

But even so, we still have an advantage over ordinary new energy vehicles in terms of power, and our battery life is slightly better than Tesla's.

If the algorithm and battery can be completely matched, this gap will be even more obvious."

"What about charging? Is it convenient to charge? How long does it take to fully charge?" Luo Fan asked.

"This is very convenient. I have added an automatic charging function to the vehicle program. Once these cars are almost out of power, they will return to the charging place to recharge themselves. The charging time usually takes 8 hours."

"Overall, it's not bad." Luo Fan gave his own evaluation.

Mr. Lei heard this and said with a smile: "Mr. Luo, we actually have a new harvest during this period. I think we can extract this automatic charging function and the obstacle avoidance technology in automatic driving technology.

Then we can reprogram it and hone it for a while, and then we can use this technology on intelligent sweeping robots. By then, our sweeping robots should be even better than those on the market."

"I'm not interested in this. Mr. Lei, you can handle it yourself." Luo Fan said.

"Okay! Then I will develop it myself. Our full smart home in Dami just lacks a sweeping robot."

Then Luo Fan and his team entered the testing site under the leadership of Aaron Kwok.

The cars at the proving ground were operating normally, but Mr. Lei and Aaron Kwok seemed not to see these cars and walked straight through the training ground.

When Luo Fan saw this, he originally wanted to imitate him, but Su Qing thought it was too dangerous and firmly pulled Luo Fan to prevent him from leaving.

In desperation, Luo Fan could only ask Aaron Kwok to stop the cars before he walked over.

When Luo Fan and Su Qing passed through the proving ground, the car restarted and began various tests.

"Mr. Luo, at present, the maturity level of our autonomous driving technology is at least at the same level as Tesla's, so there will be no problem if you just walked through, Mr. Luo.

Moreover, we have added safety protection systems to all our cars. This system is composed of laser, microwave, and ultrasonic sensors. It can be called a 100-proof anti-collision system.

Our autonomous driving system has now entered the second phase of testing. After meeting certain standards, we can prepare to apply for road testing."

"What are the specific standards?" Su Qing asked.

"Within our premises, driving at a speed of 100 yards, there will be at least 1 million kilometers without any accidents. If a major accident occurs, it will need to be postponed."

p: This is our standard requirement for road testing of newly launched car models.

"One million kilometers? Is it that long?"

"This is a mandatory requirement from above, and there is nothing we can do about it," Mr. Lei said.

"Mr. Lei is right. Mr. Luo, we are in our own venue now and can do whatever we want. But if you want to apply for a road test, a large amount of data must be prepared in the early stage."

Luo Fan nodded to express his understanding.

"How long will it take before the real road test?" Su Qing asked.

"For at least half a year, ordinary car companies' road tests are to test the performance of the car, but we are testing driverless technology, and our requirements are higher." Guo Gong replied.

"By the way, Mr. Guo, I heard that there are some ethical controversies over autonomous driving technology abroad?" Su Qing asked, changing the subject.

Luo Fan was stunned when he heard this. How come he hadn't heard of Su Qing's question?

Guo Gong nodded in agreement: "This lady is right. Although driverless technology is not mature yet, serious traffic accidents will always happen.

But according to many peers and Tesla's internal predictions, the maturity of the technology is actually a matter of time. As long as there is enough data, computer driving will be more than ten times safer than human driving.

It’s just that even a computer cannot make mistakes. Let’s not talk about problems with the chip card machine or the program. The priority selection under normal accident conditions makes this problem almost unsolvable.

There are many ethical issues here. One of the more controversial ones within Tesla is that if the car loses control, there is a row of about 20 elementary school students in front of it, and there are rivers on both sides of the road, then what should the car computer choose?
To be continued...