Cynics would have you that autonomous vehicles would never work in China; its roads too lawless, their users too reckless or malicious. Likewise for the enormous environmental but futile challenge confronting the planet; that shutting down the internal-combustion engine 30 years ago would have been the preferred option.
愤世嫉俗者可能会认为自动驾驶汽车在中国永远行不通；它的道路太无法无天，其用户太鲁莽或恶意。同样，对于地球面临的巨大的环境挑战也是徒劳的； 30 年前关闭内燃机将是首选。
The 2023 Internet of Things Exposition took place in Wuxi of Jiangsu from 21-23 October. Outside the exhibition centre was an autonomous shuttle-bus stop. Nothing could have said it plainer.
2023年物联网博览会于10月21日至23日在江苏无锡举行。展览中心外有一个自动穿梭巴士站。没有什么比这更清楚的了。
It was an opportunity too good to pass up, namely checking in on China’s latest developments in the field of fully-autonomous vehicles.
这是一个不容错过的机会，可以了解中国在全自动驾驶汽车领域的最新进展。
The Nanjinger was on 22 October thence invited to join a somewhat unique experience, along with reporters representing AFP, Korea’s The Segye Times and China’s Xinhua News Agency, among others from Germany, Italy and Japan, in touring the many advances made in Wuxi over the past couple of years.
10月22日，《南京人》受邀与代表法新社、韩国《世界时报》、中国新华社以及德国、意大利和日本等媒体的记者一起参加了一次有点独特的体验，参观了无锡在过去几年中取得的许多进步。
That all led to the present situation, whereby Wuxi has developed an Internet of Things (IoT) industrial cluster that has added some ¥400 billion to the City’s bottom line in the past year, based on Wuxi’s strong industrial foundations dating back many decades, if not centuries; including today, electronic information and auto parts.
这一切都导致了目前的情况，无锡凭借数十年乃至数百年的雄厚工业基础，形成了一个物联网产业集群，去年为该市增加了约4000亿元人民币的利润；包括今天的电子信息和汽车零部件。
This is a culmination of efforts that began in 2009, when Wuxi got the go ahead to build that termed a “national sensor network innovation demonstration zone”, together with the first national-level Internet of Vehicles pilot zone.
这是自2009年无锡率先建设“国家传感器网络创新示范区”和首个国家级车联网试验区以来的努力的结晶。
More recently, from 2017-2019, and with the support of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and Jiangsu Province, Wuxi worked with leading companies such as China Mobile and Huawei to make C-V2X (Cellular-Vehicle 2 Everything) a reality.
最近，2017年至2019年，在工业和信息化部、公安部和江苏省的支持下，无锡与中国移动、华为等领先企业合作，使C-V2X（Cellular-Vehicle 2 Everything）成为现实。
That brought us, literally, to get on the bus, an appropriate place to take a metaphorical step back and ask, “What is the IoT?”. First proposed, it is thought, by Kevin Ashton, a professor at MIT, in the 1990s, in our context, it’s where roads literally talk to vehicles.
从字面上看，这让我们上了公共汽车，这是一个适当的地方，可以退一步问：“什么是物联网？”。人们认为，这是由麻省理工学院教授 Kevin Ashton 在 20 世纪 90 年代首次提出的，在我们的背景下，它实际上是道路与车辆对话的地方。
For us, that meant a WeRide vehicle. Founded down south in Guangzhou in 2017, WeRide established its East China headquarters in Wuxi Economic Development Zone in September of last year.
对我们来说，这意味着文远知行车辆。文远知行于2017年在广州成立，去年9月在无锡经济开发区设立华东总部。
By October of 2023, over some 300 square kilometres of Wuxi in several parts of the City, there were getting on for 200 autonomous vehicles in operation. In particular, complete coverage has been realised in Wuxi High-tech Industrial Development Zone since March of this year. While many are autonomous vehicles utilised for delivery and other services, there are at present some 50 WeRide buses available for use by the public, in different modes; taxi, bus and scenic spot.
截至2023年10月，无锡市多个地区约300平方公里的区域内已有200辆自动驾驶汽车投入运营。特别是今年3月以来，无锡高新技术产业开发区实现了全覆盖。虽然许多都是用于送货和其他服务的自动驾驶车辆，但目前约有 50 辆文远知行巴士以不同的模式可供公众使用；出租车、公交车和景区。
In taxi mode, a bus is hailed just as is done on a ride-hailing platform. Bus mode sees WeRide vehicles join their human-controlled counterparts in making regular stops along a designated route, while scenic spot mode speaks for itself.
在出租车模式下，可以像在网约车平台上一样招呼公交车。公交车模式下，文远知行车辆与人工控制车辆一起沿着指定路线定期停靠，而景区模式则不言而喻。
On board, the bus is 100-percent 5G controlled and comes equipped with emergency-stop buttons, a fire extinguisher and hammers to break the windows should the need arise.
车上，公交车是 100% 5G 控制的，并配备了紧急停止按钮、灭火器和锤子，以便在需要时打破窗户。
So off we went. And it worked. Perfectly. The kicker, though, is that all aboard felt safer than if there were to be a human at the controls.
于是我们就出发了。它奏效了。完美。然而，更令人兴奋的是，机上所有人都感觉比有人控制更安全。
To say that we were taken aback is an enormous understatement. There is no driver behind a steering wheel which might be never touched and neither is the bus segregated from non-autonomous traffic. There is just a tablet-toting WeRide employee, seated at the back of the bus and trying to be inconspicuous, present only on account of government regulations to take over control if necessary.
说我们大吃一惊是一种非常轻描淡写的说法。方向盘后面没有司机可能永远不会被触碰，公交车也没有与非自动驾驶交通隔离。只有一名手持平板电脑的文远知行员工，坐在公交车后部，尽量不引人注目，只是根据政府规定在必要时接管控制权。
That’s down to Wuxi’s forming of a relatively-complete system of laws, regulations, policy guarantees and commercial operations, backed by the implementation of local legislation on the Internet of Vehicles.
这得益于无锡已经形成了比较完善的法律法规、政策保障和商业运作体系，并有地方车联网立法的实施。
Said employee is expected to be reassigned and taken off the bus once WeRide can prove itself beyond a shadow of a doubt as to that legislation, maybe within a year.
一旦文远知行能够证明自己在这项立法中毫无疑问，这名员工预计将被重新分配并带下巴士，也许在一年之内。
Even by then though, it’s likely that autonomous buses of this sort will still be a novelty to many and thus, a tempting target for a spot of mischief. But WeRide has taken care of that too. Other road users behaving maliciously toward our bus were simply honked at, to a burst of laughter from all aboard, while video was captured and sent to the local police station. Law enforcement will subsequently identify the individual responsible and bring them in for re-education.
即便到那时，这种自动驾驶公交车对许多人来说可能仍然是新鲜事物，因此成为一个诱人的恶作剧目标。但文远知行也解决了这个问题。其他对我们公交车做出恶意行为的道路使用者只是被按喇叭，引起车上所有人的一阵笑声，同时拍摄视频并发送给当地警察局。执法部门随后将查明责任人并将其带入再教育。
Back at the 2023 World IoT Expo, Xue Ming, Vice President of Huawei’s Business Group and Director of the National Broadband Mobile Communications Core Network Engineering Technology Research Centre, said that the IoT will develop to boast for itself hundreds of billions of nodes in the next 5 to 10 years, creating a multi-trillion renminbi market.
早在2023年世界物联网博览会上，华为业务集团副总裁、国家宽带移动通信核心网工程技术研究中心主任薛明就表示，未来5到10年，物联网将发展到千亿级节点，创造数万亿人民币的市场。
These are also developments that could not have come a moment too soon. Today’s upcoming generations hardly want to drive a bus for a living. And with drivers’ salaries one of the most significant costs for a bus operator, removing them means there can be many more buses on the road, while they also not need be capable of carrying 50 people. Nine seats is a perfect number; the requirement to wear a seatbelt before the bus can operate eliminating standing-room only and stifling, crowded environments.
这些进展来得太早了。今天的下一代几乎不想以开公共汽车为生。由于司机的工资是公交运营商最重要的成本之一，取消司机意味着路上可以有更多的公交车，而它们也不需要能够承载 50 人。九个座位是一个完美的数字；公交车运行前必须系好安全带，这消除了只有站立空间和令人窒息、拥挤的环境。
But much remains to be done and it is evident it needs doing on a hugely-accelerated time scale. The driver of the bus which took our reporting team around the various IoT-related sights put it best, saying, “I’ll be retired long before that thing takes my job”.
但仍有许多工作要做，而且显然需要在大大加快的时间范围内完成。带领我们的报道团队参观各种物联网相关景点的巴士司机说得最好，他说：“早在那个东西取代我的工作之前我就退休了”。
It may still be too early to say with confidence that there will be a world left for our children, and their children. Assuming so, however, chances are a big part of that will be down to to this relatively-new concept somewhat incongruously named the Internet of Things.
现在自信地宣称将为我们的孩子和他们的孩子留下一个世界可能还为时过早。然而，假设是这样，那么很可能其中很大一部分将归因于这个相对较新的概念，这个概念有点不协调，被称为物联网。
