[Auto Moto] Pony.ai is the first self-driving company to obtain a taxi license in China

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Startup Pony.ai announced Sunday that it has obtained a license for a self-driving taxi to operate on the streets of China, making it the first company of its kind to offer the service in China.

The company said the license allows Pony.ai to operate 100 self-driving cars as traditional taxis in Nansha District, the southern city of Guangzhou.

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The Chinese start-up, backed by Toyota, received approval from the city of Beijing late last year to charge a fee to run a taxi cab business in a suburb of the city. It's not the same as a taxi license.

Baidu's Apollo Go also won approval in the same Beijing area last year.

With a value of $8.5 billion in early March, Pony.ai said the Nansha Taxi license required 24 months of self-driving testing in China and/or other countries, and that it had not been involved in any traffic accidents with active liability, among other factors.

The startup said it plans to launch businesses for taxi robots in two major Chinese cities next year. The company is already testing self-driving cars in those cities and in California.

With the launch of self-driving cars, there is currently a human driver in China for safety.

The trips are set to be offered in a much smaller industrial area on a trial basis, and according to the company’s statement, in Nansha, it will start charging the entire 800 square kilometer area with self-driving cars. your .ai.

She said Pony.ai will initially deploy those cars with safe drivers but expects to remove them "in a short to medium time frame".

The announcement comes at a time when a group of startups are pouring billions of dollars into independent technology, with the goal of taking the lead early in the future of mobility.

Pony.ai is active in the United States and China, where it has tested its driverless technology on public roads in Fremont and Milpitas, California, as well as the Chinese cities of Guangzhou and Beijing.

In China, a group of local start-ups are competing. In recent months, Momenta and automaker SAIC have received formal approval to test-serve a robotaxy in Shanghai's Jiding district, a move that followed a similar move in Guangzhou by Nissan's Wei Ride.

In Shenzhen, Alibaba-backed AutoX is also testing the robot hub - which has been noticed by safety drivers - in a high-traffic urban area with lots of pedestrian and motorcyclist traffic.