Autonomous driving tech firm Pony.ai has launched its entirely unmanned robotaxi service to another mega-city after Guangzhou.
For those unaware, Japanese legacy automaker Toyota and another Chinese tech firm NIO Capital support Pony.ai.
CnEVPost reported, citing a press release, that Pony.ai secured a permit in Shenzhen to operate robotaxi services without a safety officer in the car in the city’s major areas. With that, Pony.ai is now the first and only firm to get the said permit so far.
Pony.ai’s progress in the robotaxi industry
Pony.ai was founded in late 2016 and has R&D facilities in Silicon Valley, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai, in addition to operating robotaxi services in the country.
NIO Capital invested in Pony.ai in late 2019 for an unrevealed amount when it declared the successful conclusion of a more than $200 million fundraising effort. Apart from that, Pony.ai reported in February 2020 that it had received $400 million in funding from Toyota.
On the other hand, Pony.ai released the robotaxi app PonyPilot in December 2018 and was given permission to start charging for the robotaxi service in Beijing in November 2021.
More recently, the Yizhuang Economic Development Zone in Beijing granted Pony.ai a license on March 17 to run fully unmanned robotaxi services inside a 60 square kilometer area.
Late last month, Pony.ai proudly declared that it received the necessary permission to launch its unmanned robotaxi service in Guangzhou, deploying 17 robotaxis in the city.
So what?
Pony.ai asserted that its capacity to swiftly introduce self-driving technology in several places had been demonstrated by the expansion of the driverless footprint to Shenzhen.
In fact, such technologies must first pass stringent testing before launching on public roads, including the following:
- remote scenarios
- extreme scenarios
- safety management
- network and data security
- risk response,
- a comprehensive assessment by experts and government departments
See Also:
- Baidu receives Beijing permit to launch completely driverless robotaxi service
- XPeng plans to deploy its driver assistance software to all cities in China by 2024
- Jidu Automotive officially releases fully autonomous electric car in China
- XPeng’s 1024 Tech Day 2022: Autonomous driving, neutral net-based architecture, and robotaxi fleet
- BYD: Fully autonomous driving is “basically impossible”
Indeed, Pony.ai’s technical competence is demonstrated by its ability to pass these tests.
Apart from that, the company has also completed over 1 million kilometers of totally unmanned testing and almost 200,000 paid travel orders.
