On the morning of May 22nd, at the Map and Location Services Forum of the 2025 Global Spatio Temporal Intelligence Conference (WGDC25), Yang Diange, a professor appointed by the School of Vehicles and Transportation at Tsinghua University, gave a keynote speech on "Intelligent Vehicles and In Vehicle Electronic Maps". He shared the controversies over whether intelligent vehicles need maps and whether they need map free intelligent driving in the past two years.
When it comes to the relationship between intelligent driving and maps, he pointed out that for L1-L3 assisted driving vehicles, navigation maps must be used, and high-precision maps are optional but not essential options; For L4-L5 level autonomous vehicles, high-precision maps are an essential option, otherwise it is difficult for unmanned vehicles to meet the basic requirements of safety. We are leading the technology roadmap 3.0 map and positioning special topic, which is composed of more than 30 units including Baidu, Huawei, NavInfo, Gaode, Yitu Tong, BYD, Xiaopeng, NIO, the National Quality Inspection Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Chewang Technology, Tencent Maps, SenseTime, etc. The expert group members are still expanding
Regarding intelligent cars and intelligent driving, he believes that the industrialization promotion logic of different levels of intelligent driving is completely different. The key to the landing of intelligent assisted driving for mass-produced models L1-L3 is cost and cost-effectiveness; The key to the landing of L4 autonomous driving is the balance between investment costs and operational benefits; L5 is the key to solving the social problem of zero fatalities in transportation. At present, L1-L3 level assisted driving is being industrialized on a large scale, L4 level is about to enter the industrialization stage, and the realization of L5 level fully autonomous driving will be long and arduous.
Finally, he stated that smart cars and geographic information need to balance security and development. "China's management of automotive geographic information takes into account both security and development, as well as national security and reform and opening up. The management requirements are high and the difficulty is high." He has participated in the special vehicle side security working group for geographic information security related to autonomous driving of the Ministry of Natural Resources, with 45 member units including Huawei, Baidu, Gaode, Tencent, NIO, Xiaopeng, Ideal, BYD, etc.
