Wide open roads in Pudong for driverless cars
Pudong has allowed driverless vehicles to be tested on open roads.
On Saturday, 15 autonomous vehicles by Baidu's Apollo, AutoX and Pony.ai became the first in Pudong to be granted licenses for testing on designated open roads.
Notably, people are not required to be in the vehicles during the testing, meaning that it's literally "unmanned driving."
The vehicles drove on key roads in designated areas in Jinqiao on Saturday. It took an average of 15 minutes for them to finish the 2.7-kilometer route.
"We will put our driverless vehicles to test in every scenario and period, including rush hours, so as to accelerate the pace of commercialization," said Wang Jiang, vice president of Pony.ai.
Under Pudong's rules, a driverless vehicle is required to drive at least 5,000 kilometers in road tests before it is allowed to be put into use.
"We plan to finish 1,500 kilometers of roads tests in the following two months," Wang added.