Recently, Pony.ai officially released the news that the company has reached a cooperation with the Fremont Municipal Government of California to open the PonyPilot self-driving taxi service to municipal officials. The service is mainly concentrated in the area from Fremont’s Amtrak-ACE station to the City Hall and the City Development Service Center to meet the travel needs of this busy section.
In December 2018, Pony.ai released the PonyPilot autonomous driving mobile travel project, and successively conducted testing and operations in Guangzhou, Beijing, and Irvine (Southern California, USA). With the addition of Fremont to its operating area, Pony.ai ’s ability to provide autonomous driving services worldwide has been further strengthened. This cooperation is an important step towards the construction of a smart city by Pony.ai and Fremont. With the PonyPilot app, Fremont users can easily call a pony car. These unmanned vehicles are equipped with a full-stack autonomous driving system developed by Pony.ai, which can easily deal with complex urban road conditions.
Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai, said that in the long run, Pony.ai not only solves simple community travel, but also contributes to the construction of smart cities in the future. In addition to realizing safe and smooth traffic, Pony.ai ‘s autonomous driving technology will also promote business activities in more regions and create economic value.
In March 2019, the city of Fremont adopted The Fremont Mobility Action Plan, which aims to ease the status of regional traffic congestion. By 2040, the goal is to reduce self-driving commutes from 73% to 50 %. The PonyPilot self-driving travel service project is one of the ways to achieve this goal and address the region’s growing travel needs.
Pony.ai was founded in December 2016 and now has a market value of about $ 1 billion. The company mainly uses software to drive self-driving cars and has cooperated with car companies such as BYD and GAC Group. On November 4th, Pony.ai also cooperated with Hyundai Motor to launch BotRide, a self-driving taxi service in Irvine, California, USA. Initially it was a free service. Hyundai Motor also provided 10 KONA new energy vehicles to form a fleet, which will continue in the future Increase the number of vehicles.
