Shanghai (ZXZC)- JD.com, Inc., also known as Jingdong, a Chinese e-commerce company and one of the two largest B2C online retailers in China, debuted its self-developed L4 self-driving heavy truck at 618 JD CUBE on May 29 which is expected to launch commercial trial-operation by 2020. In the future, the group will focus on the R&D and promotion of the self-driving truck on highways. 

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) divides auto driving into six levels, from L0 to L5, according to the intelligence level and automation capabilities of vehicles. The L4 level means that humans do not necessarily need to provide operations and the car can automatically drive. However, compared to the L5, it has certain restrictions on the operational environment and the roads it runs on.

The L4 self-driving heavy truck, as one of the latest achievements researched and developed by JD.com's Silicon Valley R&D Center which was set up in 2016, has completed 2,400 hours of smart driving super testing on some authorized roads in the US.

In the future, JD.com will establish the logistic network in China based on the L4 self-driving heavy truck, so that these trucks can drive on highways in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and seven regional centers of JD.com, but will not enter into the urban cities by themselves, said by Xiao Jun, vice-president of Jiongdong Group and president of X-business.

The group will accordingly build several service zones for these trucks at the roadside of the highways. Before entering into urban areas, the self-driving trucks will stop at the service zone first, then drivers who stay at service zones will drive these trucks into JD.com’s logistic centers which are generally less than 10 kilometers away from highways, Xiao Jun added.

Also, the unmanned aerial vehicle with 1,000 km mileage and JOY's smart restaurant developed by JD.com were showcased at 618 JD CUBE on May 29. “Even though it has been less than one year since the X-business set up, JD.com possesses specific scenarios——the entire logistic system (storage and distribution) for these unmanned machines to have immediate testing and debugging once they were developed”, Xiao Jun said during the previous interview.

Now, it seems that JD.com honors its commitment.