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Chinese autonomous driving start-up Pony.ai and South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Group have teamed up to launch robotaxi service BotRide in Irvine, California. Photo: Handout

Hyundai and Chinese start-up Pony.ai join forces on driverless robotaxi service in California

  • BotRide marks the first autonomous ride-hailing service to be made available in the most populous US state

While the global market for driverless transport will take many years to develop, commuters in the US city of Irvine, California, will soon be able to hail rides from an on-demand robotaxi service set up by South Korean carmaker Hyundai Motor Group, using technology from Chinese start-up Pony.ai.

The new service, called BotRide, will start operations on November 4 with an initial fleet of 10 autonomous sport utility vehicles providing free rides in Irvine through January, according to the two companies on Friday.

Hyundai Motor has adopted Pony.ai’s self-driving system in the SUVs for BotRide, which can be accessed by commuters via an app created by on-demand, ride-sharing services provider Via. The BotRide app can support carpools, which allows multiple commuters to share a ride, and direct passengers to nearby pickup points to avoid detours.

“The pilot introduces BotRide to several hundred Irvine residents, including college students,” said Christopher Chang, head of business development at Hyundai Motor’s strategy and technology division, in a statement. “The goal is to study consumer behaviour in an autonomous ride-sharing environment.”

Toyota, Pony.ai team up to build driverless fleet in China

BotRide marks the first autonomous ride-hailing service to be made available in California. To ensure public safety, each autonomous SUV will have a human co-pilot in charge of monitoring the self-driving system, according to Hyundai Motor and Pony.ai.

Today, Pony.ai is part of a group of Chinese start-ups, including WeRide and AutoX, that are working to put driverless cars on the road, employing multi-sensor systems and advanced software. Autonomous driving has become a key segment of the artificial intelligence market, in which China and the US both seek to be global leaders.

The holy grail for those Chinese companies, as well as US firms like Waymo, is to reach Level 5 in autonomous driving – in which an autonomous car would be able to perform driving tasks in all environmental and road conditions as well as (or even better than) a human can.

BotRide’s launch next month in Irvine, a city of more than 270,000, will come about four months after Pony.ai received a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission, which allowed it to operate a self-driving public transport service.

That was the first time US robotaxi permits have been issued to companies of Chinese origin, as more players compete in developing driverless technology for future transport services.

Founded by two former Baidu executives, Pony.ai was valued at US$1.7 billion in its latest funding round in April when Beijing Kunlun Tech invested US$50 million in the company for a 3 per cent stake.

Chinese self-driving start-ups AutoX and Pony.ai get green light to offer rides on California roads

The company launched its own robotaxi service in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, in December.

To be sure, data from recent road tests showed that Chinese companies still lag behind US companies in the autonomous driving field, according to an annual report released by the California transport watchdog in February.

Drivers with Alphabet-owned Waymo disengaged their auto-drive function roughly once every 11,000 miles (17,703 kilometres) over a 12-month period through November 2017, according to the report. Drivers with Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, disengaged once every 5,200 miles on average during the same period. By contrast, Pony.ai recorded human intervention once every 1,022 miles, the report said.

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