The announcement comes today, that Pony.ai and Toyota will build a driverless fleet in China. Pony.ai is an autonomous driving startup, meanwhile, Toyota is a Japanese car giant. The alliance came as both firms realize a driverless future.
The announcement was made by two firms ahead of the Shanghai World Artificial Intelligence Conference that is due to kick off later this week. Within the announcement, they said that they will together explore possibilities to provide mobility services that are ‘safe for all.’
Pony.ai, headquarter is in Guangzhou, was founded by two former Baidu Inc. executives in 2016. The startup has been piloting it a robotaxi service in China. It is the first two companies of Chinese origin to receive a robotaxi operation permit.
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Autonomous Car Development
The autonomous driving sector has drawn billions of dollars of investment over the past few years. Besides, it also becomes one of the key sectors in AI.
For instance, in July, Toyota announced that it will invest US$600 million in Didi Chuxing.
China has currently become the center of autonomous car development. According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles in February, there are 48 self-driving companies that submitted data. While 11 of them were either headquartered in China or had their main operations in the country.
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However, the same report shows that Chinese companies still lag behind leading US firms in the field.
In contrast, Pony.ai, the front-runner among Chinese autonomous driving companies, reported human intervention once every 1,022 miles. Still, the gap is narrowing. The company pointed out that when it first started test drives on Californian roads, its disengagement metric was around once every 100 miles.
However, the Pony.ai, also claim to have a better understanding of the country’s traffic and weather based on accumulated test drives. Therefore, their tech more confident in navigating Chinese roads.
