Pony.ai receives licence to test self-driving cars in Beijing

Pony.ai announced that it has secured the T3 autonomous vehicle testing license in Beijing, making it the first startup to do so. The company also became the first startup in the world to obtain the Beijing Autopilot Drive Test License.

The T3 license obtained is the highest-level automatic driving road test license issued to date in China "“ representing autonomous vehicles with comprehensive capabilities such as road condition awareness, traffic law compliance, route execution, and emergency response. Only two companies in China have obtained this level of license.

Beijing is currently the city with the longest open test roads in China. The first batch of open roads are located in the Beijing Economic Development Zone (Yizhuang), Shunyi District and Haidian District, with a total of 33 kilometers and a total of 105 kilometres respectively.

In this regard, Xiaoma Zhixing CEO Peng Jun said that Beijing has been strongly supporting start-ups to participate in unmanned road test work. The government's emphasis is on the policy formulation and follow-up work. The core of autonomous driving is the capability to face the uncertainty of road conditions and complex road scenarios, which also forms the core of Beijing's road test license evaluation.