By Qiaoyi Li and Brenda Goh
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s capital Beijing handed new rules on Tuesday to encourage autonomous driving know-how within the metropolis, with authorities planning to finally enable driverless public buses and taxis.
Autonomous automobiles that cross highway testing and security assessments can be allowed to use for highway trials, the state-backed Beijing Every day newspaper reported, which stated the brand new rules take impact from April 1.
Town helps the usage of autonomous automobiles for personal automobiles, city buses, trams and taxis, it stated, including that it desires to encourage the development of clever highway infrastructure to assist such transport.
In a separate discover revealed on Monday, the central Chinese language metropolis of Wuhan additionally stated it had authorised rules to advertise the event of clever linked automobiles.
Chinese language authorities have been aggressively greenlighting trials for self-driving know-how with not less than 19 cities conducting robotaxi and robobus assessments, Reuters reported in August.
Corporations with massive robotaxi fleets in use in China embrace Apollo Go, a subsidiary of know-how large Baidu (NASDAQ:), which plans to deploy 1,000 robotaxis in Wuhan by end-2024.
Pony.ai, which floated within the U.S. market in November, plans to increase its robotaxi fleet nationwide to over 1,000 by 2026 from 250 this yr.
Different companies exploring robotaxi alternatives on the planet’s largest auto market embrace WeRide, AutoX and SAIC Motor.
U.S. EV large Tesla (NASDAQ:) additionally goals to carry full self-driving (FSD) to China within the first quarter of 2025, pending regulatory approval, and has stated it’s going to begin producing its personal robotaxi in 2026.
