Beijing unveils plans to spice up driverless car use in capital

By Qiaoyi Li and Brenda Goh

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s capital Beijing handed new rules on Tuesday to encourage autonomous driving expertise within the metropolis, with authorities planning to ultimately permit driverless public buses and taxis.

Autonomous automobiles that cross highway testing and security assessments will probably be allowed to use for highway trials, the state-backed Beijing Day by day newspaper reported, which mentioned the brand new rules take impact from April 1.

The town helps the usage of autonomous automobiles for personal vehicles, city buses, trams and taxis, it mentioned, including that it desires to encourage the development of clever highway infrastructure to help such transport.

In a separate discover printed on Monday, the central Chinese language metropolis of Wuhan additionally mentioned it had authorised rules to advertise the event of clever related automobiles.

Chinese language authorities have been aggressively greenlighting trials for self-driving expertise with at the very least 19 cities conducting robotaxi and robobus assessments, Reuters reported in August.

Firms with giant robotaxi fleets in use in China embrace Apollo Go, a subsidiary of expertise big Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), 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 develop its robotaxi fleet nationwide to over 1,000 by 2026 from 250 this yr.

Different companies exploring robotaxi alternatives on the earth’s largest auto market embrace WeRide, AutoX and SAIC Motor.

U.S. EV big Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) additionally goals to carry full self-driving (FSD) to China within the first quarter of 2025, pending regulatory approval, and has mentioned it can begin producing its personal robotaxi in 2026.