Pony.ai Starts Paid Self-Driving Shuttle Service at Daxing Airport
TapTechNews June 27th, Pony.ai announced today that it has initiated paid self-driving shuttle services at Daxing Airport and has become one of the first batch of companies in Beijing to obtain the commercial pilot of 'driver-present' on autopilot on expressways.
According to the official introduction, Pony.ai's self-driving service charging plan at Daxing Airport adopts a 'fixed-price' mechanism, referring to the pricing rule used when providing services in urban areas, and users don't need to pay additional highway tolls. In February this year, Pony.ai's self-driving airport transfer service was opened to the public. Users can make an appointment for airport transfer a day in advance through the mobile app of the same name 'Pony.ai', and can travel between more than 1000 stops in the Yizhuang area and Daxing Airport.
Pony.ai said: 'Whether dealing with highway toll stations, on and off ramps, temporary road works, or dealing with common and extreme scenarios such as spilled objects, these vehicles can handle them freely, and their traffic speed and efficiency even exceed that of human drivers. At the same time, Pony.ai has continuously improved service capabilities starting from details such as vehicle management, cabin experience, and taxi-hailing process, and has won high praise from users.'
According to TapTechNews' previous reports, in February this year, Pony.ai, Baidu's 'RoboRun', WeRide, and AutoX AnTu successively announced that they were the first batch to be approved for the manned demonstration application of self-driving vehicles on the Beijing Daxing Airport Expressway and some areas of Daxing Airport, which means that Beijing has become the world's first capital city to open the autopilot manned demonstration application from the urban area to the airport.
The 'airport line' of self-driving had previously set up more than 600 stops in the core area of Beijing Yizhuang to the pick-up and drop-off points at Daxing Airport. The pick-up point of the self-driving airport pick-up at Daxing Airport is at 17A of the rapid pick-up channel on the first floor of the terminal building, and the drop-off point for airport departure is at the middle edge of the fifth departure gate on the fourth floor of the terminal building. The operating route covers urban road and expressway scenarios, including about 40 kilometers of expressways such as the Beijing-Taiwan Expressway, the North Daxing Airport Expressway, and the Daxing Airport Expressway.