Chinese tech company Baidu Inc said on Friday that the company has been granted Beijing's first-ever license to test fully driverless vehicles on public roads, with no driver or safety operator in the car, a major step in its autonomous ride-hailing business in the capital.

A total of 10 fully driverless test vehicles will travel across a 20 square kilometer area in Yizhuang, a southern suburb of Beijing, covering a series of complex urban road scenarios. With the start of test drives in Beijing, the cumulative area of operation and testing for Baidu's fully driverless fleet now covers a total area of over 100 square kilometers across China.

In August, Baidu secured China's first permits to offer fully driverless commercial robotaxi services, completely without human drivers or safety operator in the car, in Chongqing and Hubei province's capital Wuhan.

Earlier this week, the company announced a major expansion of its commercialized fully driverless robotaxi service in Wuhan, tripling the size of its operation area, increasing the number of robotaxis in service and expanding operating time to include key evening hours.

It also plans to put an additional 200 fully driverless robotaxis into operation across China in 2023, aiming to cover the largest fully driverless ride-hailing service area in the world by the end of the same year.

The cumulative order volume of Apollo Go exceeded 1.4 million, ranking Baidu as the world's largest robotaxi service provider by the end of the third quarter of this year.