IT Home, November 22 – According to the official WeChat account of Pony.ai, the company has recently obtained the first license for testing fleet driving of autonomous trucks in Guangzhou, allowing them to conduct L4 level fleet autonomous driving tests on open roads in the city. This provides strong support for Pony.ai to further expand its large-scale fleet autonomous driving transportation business. Pony.ai’s autonomous truck fleet operates in a “1+N” formation, with one autonomous truck leading multiple L4 level autonomous trucks to safely travel on the highway. Five autonomous trucks have been granted the license for fleet driving tests. This “1+N” fleet autonomous driving formation greatly reduces operating costs and improves transportation efficiency. Additionally, by eliminating the time difference in braking between the front and rear vehicles, reducing the following distance, and allowing the front vehicle to break the wind for the rear vehicle, it effectively reduces air resistance, lowers carbon emissions, promotes green travel, and improves road usage efficiency, alleviating traffic congestion and reducing traffic accidents.
In December 2020, Pony.ai obtained the first autonomous driving truck test license in Guangdong Province. Based on this test permit, Pony.ai continues to continuously refine and improve its technology research and development, system optimization, and actual testing to fully meet a series of requirements for autonomous driving capability, test plans, and content required to obtain this platooning test license, thus successfully obtaining this platooning test license. Currently, Pony.ai has conducted explorations of long-haul and dedicated logistics freight transportation for autonomous driving trucks in multiple locations in China, achieving automatic driving of trucks in different road and weather conditions. In June 2022, Pony.ai’s autonomous driving truck was included in the mixed-traffic demonstration operation vehicle model catalog in Guangzhou and obtained demonstration operation qualifications. In September 2023, Pony.ai received a notice for the demonstration application of intelligent networked heavy-duty trucks in the intelligent networked vehicle policy pilot zone in Beijing, and its autonomous driving trucks will provide demonstration freight services in real scenarios in collaboration with China Merchants Group. As of now, Pony.ai’s autonomous driving truck test mileage has exceeded 3 million kilometers, commercial operation mileage has exceeded 610,000 kilometers, and the total freight weight is nearly 40,000 tons.