Pony.ai's self-driving cars hit the road in Nansha on February 2.[Photo provided to Newsgd.com]
Pony.ai, a California-based self-driving vehicle company, operated its first public road test in Nansha on February 2. The company invited government officials and journalists from Guangzhou and Beijing to be its very first passengers.
Equipped with an original system and the latest models of Velodyne sensors, all testing vehicles completed the 2.8-kilometer route and successfully identified the pedestrians, traffic lights and other complex situations along the street.
Cai Chaolin, a member of the standing committee of the CPC Guangzhou Committee and Party Chief of Nansha district, spoke highly of the experience, saying, “It drives even better than me.”
Having set up the China headquarter in Nansha two months ago, Pony.ai went through numerous examinations on its vehicles under different circumstances. The company vowed to open the riding experience to the public as long as it had been more tested.
A signing ceremony is held on February 2.[Photo provided to Newsgd.com]
Meanwhile, Pony.ai signed a cooperative agreement with the Guangdong-based auto giant, GAC, in the morning of January 2, aiming to jointly develop a world-class smart driving system in Nansha district.
Peng Jun, founder and CEO of Pony.ai, is a high-profile ‘celebrity’ in the tech industry, and he used to be Baidu’s Chief Software Architect. Peng said the cooperation with GAC was promising, because GAC and Pony.ai were respectively the world’s top hardware provider and software provider.
Peng Jun, CEO of Pony.ai, and Lou Tiancheng, CTO of Pony.ai, are in the press conference. [PhotoNewsgd.com]
In fact, to cooperate with enterprises like GAC is one of the reasons that Pony.ai established its China headquarter in Guangzhou’s Nansha. “Guangdong has well-developed manufacturing and tech industries,” said Peng Jun, “and the government is very supportive to us.”
In addition, Peng Jun said Nansha had suitable road condition and weather to develop self-driving vehicles. “We organized tests during the rainy days earlier, and all passed,” he said, “I heard there would be thunder storms in Match and April, we will test under that circumstance.”
Pony.ai told media that it planned to build a self-driving vehicle-testing field with its business partners in the district. “The project has already been under operation though it’s only 1 to 2-square-kilometers by far,” said Hu Wen, COO of Pony.ai, “it will expand to about 30-square-kilometers with one to two hundred testing vehicles in the future.”
Currently, Nansha pays lots of attention on the R&D of artificial intelligence by attracting many large AI companies. Besides Pony.ai, 30 AI companies including Microsoft and AsiaInfo have launched projects here.
Pony.ai's self-driving cars hit the road in Nansha on February 2.[Photo provided to Newsgd.com]
Reported by Jasmine Yin
Edited by Wing Zhang
