By Dai Qi
Beijing City licensed Pony.ai, a self-driving start-up in China, for road tests on Monday, according to a Xinhua report.
The license is graded as T3, the highest of its kind that has been given out in China, which means the self-driving vehicle is capable of recognizing road conditions, obeying traffic laws, executing the routes, and tackling emergent situations, among others.
Pony.ai is one of the only two firms that have attained the license, following Baidu, a tech giant in China.
"Just like a human driver's test, the self-driving vehicles have to pass several exams on those required abilities to obtain the qualification in Beijing City. A third party institution will also put it to the test to see whether the driver can take over the car-controls anytime and anywhere," said Li Hengyu, the person in charge of the research and development (R&D) in Pony.ai.
Beijing is the first city in China that set it as a must-have for self-driving firms to prepare their self-driving cars in a closed field for at least 5,000 kilometres before taking the test for the license.
The city also established the longest road mileages for the self-driving tests in China, which contains 33 roads scattered around in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (Yizhuang), Shunyi District and Haidian District, 105 kilometres in total.
Currently, the Beijing local government has issued several regulations and test guidelines for self-driving firms and road tests since December last year.
Peng Jun, the chief executive officer of Pony.ai, said that self-driving vehicles had to deal with a lot of uncertainties and complex situations on the road, which is what the test is focusing on.
"The license is a recognition for the company, and we will do our best to overcome any other challenges to achieve volume production with a stable and reliable system," said Peng.
