Chinese internet giant Baidu officially started road tests for autonomous driving and vehicle infrastructure systems at its demonstration zone in Yangquan city, in North China's Shanxi province on March 19, according to local officials. 

Three vehicles equipped with Baidu's Apollo autonomous driving system carried out tests on Dalian Street on the day, a main road in Yangquan Economic and Technological Development Area in the city. 

The test road has a steep slope, diverse signal light indications and complicated road conditions, which greatly challenge the autonomous driving vehicles. 

The road adaptation development test will provide strong data support and experience for automatic driving technology verifications and test evaluations. 

Officials said its program is of great significance to future automatic driving across China. 

On Nov 21, 2019, the Yangquan government, Baidu Inc, Shanxi Transportation Holdings Group and China Mobile Communications Co established a partnership to jointly develop the demonstration zone project of the autonomous driving and vehicle infrastructure cooperative system (urban road section).

Officials said this is a benchmark project for Yangquan city in the new infrastructure construction sector concerning artificial intelligence and the internet of things -- and is one of the Shanxi provincial transportation pilot projects. 

Yangquan Economic and Technological Development Area, as a major constructor of the project, has organized a special team to advance the project and cooperated with Baidu on completing the mapping of Dalian Street in this February.

In addition, the Yangquan big data application bureau has communicated with other sides of the partnership, to solve problems in the project's construction and arrange policy and financial support for the project. 

Plans are now for the project constructors to build intelligent vehicle-to-everything vehicle infrastructure. 

This will be installed at the intersections of Dalian Street and other roads -- including Baojin Road, Ningbo Road, Hongqiao Road, Qingdao Road and pedestrian crossings at the south gate of Beishan Park in Yangquan -- to pilot 5G-based internet of vehicle technologies and vehicle infrastructure cooperative system on urban highways.