Driverless cars on our doorstep: Lantau’s quiet AV revolution

Safety-first trials are already running near the Discovery Bay Tunnel. Is this a careful first step toward driverless taxis?

Photo by Felix Chan

If you’ve been driving or taking the bus around Sunny Bay or the Discovery Bay Tunnel lately, you might have spotted something a little unusual: a car or bus with special labels, gliding along a bit more deliberately than the usual traffic. Welcome to the age of autonomous vehicles, and yes, it’s arriving right here on our island.

Over the past year and a half, North Lantau has become one of Hong Kong’s main testing grounds for self-driving technology. Baidu’s team has already clocked more than 100,000 kilometres of careful, incident-free trials since late 2024, starting on Airport Island and steadily spreading into Tung Chung. This summer the routes grew again, now linking the airport with Tung Chung town centre via Chek Lap Kok South Road and stretching out towards Sunny Bay and the Discovery Bay Tunnel approaches.

Operators are running trials linking the airport with Tung Chung town centre via Chek Lap Kok South Road and stretching out towards Sunny Bay and the Discovery Bay Tunnel.

That means the roads many of us use every day - Sunny Bay Road, Cheung Tung Road, parts of Tung Chung Waterfront Road, and the area around the tunnel toll plaza are now part of live autonomous trials. There’s even a 20-seat autonomous bus being tested between Sunny Bay and Siu Ho Wan, fitted with fancy new camera technology designed to react faster in Hong Kong’s busy, sometimes chaotic conditions.

The good news is that caution is very much the order of the day. Every vehicle on these public roads still has a trained backup operator either sitting in the driver’s seat or watching remotely from a control centre. Fully driverless tests (no one in the vehicle at all) are currently limited to Airport Island, and only after months of successful remote-monitoring checks confirmed the systems were stable and safe.

While ordinary residents can’t just hop into these vehicles yet (passengers are limited to designated staff or special public experience rides), the longer-term picture is more exciting. The government’s stated goals include moving toward driverless, scaled-up, and eventually commercialised AV operations. In the years ahead, that could open the door to driverless taxis or autonomous shuttle services operating in carefully chosen areas, including potentially parts of Lantau.

The vision talked about by both the operators and the Transport Department is a “Smart Mobility Network for Lantau”: safer, more efficient connections between the airport, Tung Chung, Sunny Bay and beyond. One day that might mean convenient, on-demand autonomous rides that complement our existing buses and ferries, reducing the need for private cars on some trips. Of course, any commercial services would only arrive after further rigorous testing and regulatory approval, and safety will remain the non-negotiable priority.

Keep an eye on the Transport Department’s AV trials page for the latest maps and updates, and enjoy the quiet thrill of living through a small piece of transport history, right here at home.

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