Nowadays, there are more and more driverless smart cars, but in fact, there are more and more. Today's driverless cars are more like assisted driving cars than driverless cars.

According to the classification standard of SAE American Society of Automotive Engineers, there are 6 levels of autonomous driving technology from L0 to L5. From L0, which can only be equipped with automatic emergency braking and various danger warning functions at the beginning, to L 1 and L2, which initially provided drivers with control functions such as steering, braking and acceleration, strictly speaking, it was just "intelligent driving assistance".

At present, the main watershed between autonomous driving and assisted driving of autonomous vehicles is L3 autopilot technology, but even L3 autopilot technology can only realize autonomous driving technology under certain circumstances.

Moreover, vehicles are still inseparable from the cooperation of drivers, and manual intervention is still the main way to drive. If L3 can cross L4 in the future, the steering wheel and brakes can be cancelled to realize real automatic driving. Although it still needs to be started in a specific environment, it does not need manual operation.

If we reach L5 further, there will be no restrictions on autonomous driving, and it belongs to an automobile robot with high intelligence and interactive ability, which can be used safely in any scene.

Baidu has previously launched a driverless taxi, which is based on this L4. However, considering safety and public opinion, at this stage, safe drivers are still equipped to deal with emergencies.

So strictly speaking, it is more like the technical application in the late L3, also called L3+. At present, it is rare for new energy vehicles in the world to realize L3 automatic driving function.

At present, most of the new energy vehicle companies that have emerged in China in recent years rely on their own technology accumulation, and have relatively perfect L3 technology, and have targeted the scale of L4 advanced autonomous driving to prepare for mass production.

It's just that in this case, we often focus on publicity gimmicks. In fact, at least in the next two years, only a small number of enterprises will be able to achieve L3 mass production or even L4 landing.