Chinese autonomous driving start-up AutoX wins driverless car permit for tests in California
- The AutoX cars must ensure safety for passengers on board, pedestrians, and be able to respond properly to traffic situations such as road repairs
Chinese autonomous driving start-up AutoX has won a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to start testing driverless cars in designated areas in San Jose, California – the first Chinese company to win such approval.
While AutoX has had state authority to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers since 2017, the new permit allows the company to test one autonomous vehicle without a driver behind the wheel on specified streets around its San Jose headquarters, according to a release issued by the California DMV on Friday.
AutoX is the third company to win such a driverless permit from the California DMV, after Google-backed Waymo and California-based Nuro. The permit will allow AutoX to carry out tests of self-driving cars with passengers on board at a maximum speed of 45 miles per hour.
“We objectively reached the Level-4 autonomous driving technology, and passed the same strict regulatory approval (process) as Google’s Waymo,” said Professor Xiao Jianxiong, founder and CEO of Alibaba-backed AutoX, in a statement at the weekend. “Therefore we can responsibly remove safety drivers … it requires strong technical support.”
The AutoX autonomous vehicles subject to the tests must ensure safety for passengers on board, pedestrians, and be able to respond properly to traffic situations such as road repairs, being stopped by police, and giving right-of-way to firefighting vehicles in an emergency.