Shanghai (ZXZC)- Chinese multinational technology company Baidu announced on December 30 it was granted 40 road test licenses for passenger-carrying autonomous driving by regulators in Beijing. The tech giant is one of the first companies in China to be given green lights to self-driving cars for carrying passengers on Beijing’s roads. Up to now, Baidu Apollo has obtained 120 such licenses.

Beijing boasts the country's first region-level road network of over 300km for self-driving test. Covering Yizhuang, Haidian, Shunyi, Fangshan and other regions, the test roads in the city have a total distance of more than 500km. As Beijing issues the licenses for passenger-carrying vehicles, the 322-km road in Yizhuang has been opened up for the test. 

Strict rules were revised to regulate three-phase road tests for passenger- and cargo- carrying self-driving vehicles in Beijing on 13th this month. In the first phase, over 100,000km staff-carrying road test is required and the second stage expects to see more than 500,000km passenger-carrying test.

The Chinese Internet giant has conducted road tests in 23 cities of China with the tested vehicles running over 3 million kilometers in total. In addition, the company has filed 1,237 patents on intelligent driving. In July, it also obtained T4 licenses to test self-driving vehicles in the capital city of Beijing. Licenses employed on the road test of Beijing are classified into five levels—from T1 to T5. The highest level that has been issued so far is T4 and Baidu was the first reaper (photo source: Baidu's WeChat account).