In one city in Silicon Valley, government employees can now shuttle to work in a self-driving car made by a Chinese startup.
The pilot program -- launched by Pony.ai in partnership with Fremont, California, last week -- picks up riders from a train station and drives them to a government building, the company said on Wednesday. The city says it’s exploring autonomous carpool rides as a way to reduce traffic by discouraging commuters from driving alone. For safety, a human driver still sits behind the wheel in case of an emergency.
Pony.ai was founded by two former Baidu engineers in Silicon Valley in 2016, and it later moved to Guangzhou, China. Last November, it launched a pilot robotaxi service in Irvine, California, for several hundred residents. The startup is one of the front-runners in China’s self-driving race, and it recently received US$462 million of funding from Toyota.