launcht Silicon Valley born self-driving car startup – Pony.ai is taking to the streets of Guangzhou to familiarize itself with the Chinese road conditions. One of the primary objectives for autonomous cars is to learn to piloting itself during rainy conditions. The company is said to have taken 3 months to master the wet conditions and is now doing a public trial in suburbs of Guangzhou.
Pony.ai is amongst the many Chinese autonomous driving start-ups that have emerged over the past two years. Another company, JingChi, was expected to unveil its test-ride programme to media this week but cancelled it at the last minute because government officials were too busy to attend.
Both Pony.ai and JingChi were founded by former executives from Baidu Inc., the search-engine operator that has positioned itself as an artificial intelligence (AI) company in recent years. James Peng, co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai previously served as chief architect for Baidu’s autonomous driving in the US.
