Shanghai (ZXZC)- Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous driving startup, announced on July 2 that it became the first startup that obtained the license plate for autonomous driving road tests issued by Beijing municipal government. The temporary license plates used in the autonomous driving road tests of Beijing have five levels from T1 to T5.

The T3 license plate which Poni.ai gained this time is the highest level that issued so far in China, which represents the autonomous driving vehicles possess multiple comprehensive capabilities like the road condition cognition, Vehicular Traffic Laws (VTLs) compliance, route execution and emergency disposal, etc.

Up to now, there are only two companies obtaining the T3 license plate. The other company is Baidu which gained five T3 license plates for autonomous driving road tests issued by Beijing relevant departments on March 22.

Beijing opens the longest test roads in China and its first batch of roads for autonomous driving test are located in the economic development zone (Yizhuang), Shunyi district and Haidian district Beijing, with 33 roads and 105km in total.

The CEO James Peng said Pony.ai obtaining the license plate of the highest level this time signifies the company has earned more technical recognition. James also considered that the main challenge in the next-step development of the autonomous driving is small-scale mass production, which is also challenging for the stability and reliability of the system. The startup is now cooperating actively with many partners for the mass production.

Pony.ai was founded in December 2016 and got ten millions dollars of first-round financing since its establishment. Then the startup received a license plate for autonomous driving road test from California Department of Motor Vehicles in June 2017. The company’s Guangzhou office, as its headquarter in China, was set up in December 2017. In January 2018, after Pony.ai completed the $ 112 million first-round financing and officially started the trial operation of the autonomous driving, it signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Co., Ltd. (GAC Group) at the same month to deploy in autonomous driving area. The startup established its first artificial intelligence (AI) research institute for autonomous driving in May this year.