A Chinese autonomous trucking start-up has said it has clocked around 30 million miles (40 million kilometres) of driving with zero accidents.

Shanghai-based Inceptio Technology was founded by Julian Ma in 2018. It has a R&D Centre operating in Silicon Valley, California and lists Budweiser, JD Logistics and Deppon Express as customers.  It is backed by venture capital firm Hongshan, previously known as Sequoia China.

Inceptio’s SAE Level 3 (L3) autonomous trucks have been in commercial operation since 2021 and it has worked with two OEMs, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle and Sinotruck.

According to Ma, its L3 assisted driving can reduce driver fatigue by up to 35% and around a third of its operating lines can achieve a reduction in fuel of up to 7%.

In its milestone announcement, the firm said it covered China’s seven core economic zones with almost 50,000 trips.

On the news, Julian Ma said: "We are incredibly proud of the stellar performance record that Inceptio trucks have amassed over the past two years.” Ma also added it was looking at opportunities to deploy its technology on a global scale.

It uses fully self-developed Autonomous Driving Control Unit and and long-range 3D sensing technology that - it claims - has an error rate of less than 5% at a distance of 1,000 metres.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Ma said that having started on a L2 and L3 basis, “we [Inceptio] think it’s possible to get driverless trucks on highways in five years.”