After the first lot of road test licenses for automatous vehicles were issued, traditional carmakers emerging carmakers, and Internet companies successively enlarged their investment in the automatic drive technology, which stirred up a sensation in the automotive industry. Also, the general public gives high attention to development of the automatic drive technology. Not only did DFM procure the first lot of road test licenses for automatous vehicles, but officially displayed to the market its up-to-the-minute automatic drive achievements like DFM AX7 2.0 Autonomous Prototype and DFM KL L4 Intelligent Truck. All these achievements signify DFM is stepping into a new age in development of intelligent products. 

At the inception phase of the emergence of the intelligent drive technology in the world, the Technical Center of DFM embarked on research and practice of advanced technologies in relevant fields. Ever since 2013, the Technical Center of DFM has not just built the autonomous vehicle technology development team, but officially set up the Intelligent Network Connection Department in early 2018. Over the past six years, DFM Intelligent Drive Technology Team has carried out technical installation on DFM’s vehicle types in mass production. In succession, it launched onto the market A60 intelligent prototype (Edition 2013), AX7 intelligent 1.0 prototype (Edition 2014), and AX7 autonomous 2.0 prototype (Edition 2017), in addition to completing engineering-oriented and industrialized development of new technologies like automatic parking and intelligent driver assistance.  

Herein, AX7 autonomous 2.0 prototype (Edition 2017) was granted the “First lot of road test licenses” in Chongqing on April 18, this year. In the field of autonomous commercial vehicle, DFM also made significant breakthroughs this year. On April 24 this year, DFM KL L4 intelligent truck made its debut in public. Since it officially launched the intelligent truck project in 2014, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. has eventually made significant achievements: two L4 autonomous DFM KL 6×4 tractors demonstrated items (like cooperative formation and drive in close distance) in the Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. Technical Center Park, as well as realized automatic following and fully autonomous steering at the bend through adaptive cruise system and lane keeping technology.

DFM AX7 Autonomous 2.0 Prototype received high recognition from the industry, and then DFM KL L4 intelligent truck came onto the market, implying that DFM fully quickens its pace in development of autonomous vehicles this year. By now, it has made breakthroughs in several core technologies, so that DFM stood at the forefront of the industry in the intelligent network connection era 

Looking ahead, DFM is developing the next-generation battery autonomous prototype. In terms of upper body, DFM adopts modularized design, and it can develop vehicle types (e.g., Minibus and cargo delivery vehicle) for different purposes (like carrying cargo or personnel) according to specific demands. In addition, “Intelligent Drive Controller” will be applied in DFM autonomous prototype of this generation. 

In terms of commercial vehicle, Jiang Xuefeng, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd., said: “in view of the development tendency, DFM Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. worked out the technical route for development of electrification and intelligent network connection based on representative application scenes.” Herein, representative application scenes on electrification include high-speed logistics, urban environmental sanitation logistics, site works, and intercity logistics; representative application scenes on intelligent network connection include high-speed logistics, port and wharf, urban environmental sanitation, and site works. According to these representative application scenes, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. integrates electrification with intelligent network connection to develop the future-oriented technology and commodity platform, and work out the solutions in response to future demands.