Pony.ai gets green light for 100 robotaxis in Guangzhou

Autonomous driving firm Pony.ai’s robotaxis are now counted as traditional taxis after being licensed to operate a fleet of 100 vehicles in Guangzhou, China.

Photo credit: Pony.ai

Pony.ai’s rates will follow the city’s fare pricing, and it will cover 800 square kilometers of Guangzhou’s Nansha district.

Prior to getting its license, the company had to go through 24 months of autonomous driving tests with at least 1 million kilometers of total testing mileage. Pony.ai’s vehicles also had to cover 200,000 kilometers of testing within the Guangzhou area without any accidents.

The development comes months after the firm got a robotaxi license to operate in Beijing alongside a competing business under search engine giant Baidu. Pony.ai will still have safety drivers in their vehicles but future rides will eventually remove them.

“The inclusion of autonomous vehicles in the unified and standardized management of taxis proves that both government policy and the public are increasingly accepting robotaxis as a form of everyday transportation,” said Tiancheng Lou, co-founder and CTO of Pony.ai. The firm got Toyota’s backing in a US$462 million round.

Lou co-founded the company with CEO James Peng in 2018. It scrapped its US listing plans last year out of concerns over the Chinese government’s tech crackdown.

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