Guangzhou's local authorities recently issued a batch of licences that allow several companies to road test autonomous vehicles, the fourth tier-1 megacity in China turning on the green light to unmanned vehicle road tests following Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Enterprises that were given the go-ahead include Auto X, GAC Group, WeRide.ai, Pony.ai and BlueDeep Technology. Aside from GAC Group, the other three are AI start-ups.
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Some of them have already obtained such qualification from other cities. For instance, AutoX, Pony ai. and GAC Group were given the permission to conduct self-driving car road tests by local governments of Zhaoqing, Beijing and Chongqing respectively in 2018.
By the end of April of the year 2019, there were a total of 109 licences that had been released to companies across China for their autonomous driving road tests, according to a summary done by AutoInfo, a Chinese automotive information website.
Of that, 16 cities had got their enterprises received the licences, among which Beijing owned the most—up to 59 pieces. The runner-up Chongqing, issuing 12 licences in total, had attracted a number of applicants with its abundant geomorphic resources. Jiangsu Province released a total of 7 licences—2 pieces for Wuxi, 3 pieces for Changzhou and 2 pieces for Suzhou.
What's more, a total of 35 companies were given the licences. Baidu possessed nearly 50% of total pieces with its footprints scattering in 5 cities including Beijing (45 pieces), Pingtan (3 pieces), Chongqing (1 piece), Changsha (1 piece) and Tianjin (1 piece).
