Beijing unveils plan to spice up use of driverless autos in capital By Reuters

By Qiaoyi Li and Brenda Goh

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s capital Beijing adopted new rules on Tuesday aimed toward encouraging autonomous driving applied sciences within the metropolis, with authorities planning to finally enable driverless public buses and taxis.

Autonomous autos that cross street exams and security assessments shall be allowed to use for street exams, reported the state-backed Beijing Every day, which mentioned the brand new rules would take impact on April 1.

The town helps using autonomous autos for passenger automobiles, metropolis buses, trams and taxis, she mentioned, including that she desires to encourage the development of good street infrastructure to assist one of these transportation .

In a separate discover revealed on Monday, the central Chinese language metropolis of Wuhan additionally mentioned it had authorized rules to advertise the event of clever linked autos.

Chinese language authorities have aggressively green-lighted self-driving expertise trials, with not less than 19 cities conducting robotaxi and robobus exams, Reuters reported in August.

Firms with massive fleets of robo-taxis in use in China embrace Apollo Go, a subsidiary of tech large Baidu (NASDAQ:), which plans to deploy 1,000 robo-taxis in Wuhan by the tip of 2024.

Pony.ai, which was launched to the U.S. market in November, plans to increase its robotaxis fleet nationwide to greater than 1,000 by 2026, up from 250 this yr.

Different firms exploring robotaxi alternatives on this planet’s largest auto market embrace WeRide, AutoX and SAIC Motor.

US electrical car large Tesla (NASDAQ:) additionally goals to introduce absolutely autonomous driving (FSD) in China within the first quarter of 2025, pending regulatory approval, and has introduced that it’s going to begin producing its personal robotaxi in 2026 .