Shanghai (ZXZC)- Honda's China business unit announced on April 16 it has collaborated with AutoX, a self-driving tech developer backed by Alibaba, to explore autonomous driving solutions.

Both parties will jointly carry out autonomous vehicle tests on public roads, using Honda's Accord and Inspire sedans armed with AutoX's self-driving technologies.

Since the introduction of the Honda SENSING active safety technology to China in 2015, the Japanese automaker is vigorously pushing ahead with the mass production and application of the next-generation Honda SENSING safety and driver assistance technologies.

Last month, Honda launched a new car equipped with certified Level 3 autonomous driving technologies, paving the way for the auto industry to commercialize such automation for passenger vehicles.

AutoX's Robotaxi fleet; photo credit: AutoX

Honda said AutoX has accumulated abundant experience and resources of autonomous driving road tests. It expects to deepen its understanding about China's road conditions and explore autonomous driving solutions befitting China's traffic environment.

AutoX announced in late January this year that its Robotaxi service, with no safety drivers behind the steering wheel, was available to the general public in Shenzhen. This followed Waymo, who also made the service open to the public in last October. 

The Shenzhen-headquartered autonomous driving startup has been conducting Robotaxi trial operation in such populous cities as Shanghai and Wuhan, but still uses safety drivers. Users can hail an autonomous vehicle via a general app that can summon both human-driven taxi and the Robotaxi.

In July 2020, AutoX got the fully driverless Robotaxi permit from California's DMV, becoming the first one in China that held such permit.