Text/Yang Zheng
On April 24, "self-driving company" Xiaoma Zhixing had a new identity: brother.
Although strictly speaking, Xiaoma Zhixing obtained the first batch of autonomous taxi operation indicators in China, considering the meaning of "automatic driving", the Taxi you ride on is also "driven" by Xiaoma Zhixing.
What should people who drive taxis be called?
Master, go?
This is not a joke. From the beginning of May, you'll have the opportunity to catch a self-driving taxi in Guangzhou operated by Xiaoma Zhixing.
On April 24, Xiaoma Zhixing announced that it won the bid for the 2022 taxi capacity index in Nansha District, Guangzhou, and was allowed to provide taxi operation services through autonomous vehicles that meet the relevant technical requirements. Following the approval to commercialize Robotaxi services in Beijing, Xiaoma Zhixing became the first autonomous driving enterprise in China to obtain a taxi business license.
Xiaoma Zhixing said that it was allowed to invest a total of 100 self-driving vehicles in Nansha, Guangzhou to provide taxi services. It is expected that from May, Xiaoma Zhixing will start charging operations in the entire area of Nansha for 800 square kilometers, and passengers can use the service and complete payment through the PonyPilot+ App, and the charging standard will be in accordance with the unified pricing standard of taxis in Guangzhou.
In November 2021, Xiaoma Zhixing began to provide commercial self-driving travel services to the public in Beijing in the form of a pilot. Obtaining the taxi operation index in Guangzhou this time means that the technology and experience of self-driving taxis have been recognized on a larger scale.
Xiaoma Zhixing said that from the launch of the taxi mini program in December 2018 to the present, Xiaoma Zhixing has provided a large number of public with normalized automatic driving travel services, and has continuously iteratively upgraded the research and development of automatic driving systems and all aspects of travel services. As of mid-April, the PonyPilot+ service had served more than 700,000 orders, with nearly 80 percent of "repeat customers" and 99 percent of passengers giving positive reviews after completing their trips.
"The inclusion of autonomous vehicles in the unified standardized management of taxis once again proves that policies and the public have adopted autonomous driving as a way of daily travel, and is also a recognition of the robotaxi riding experience and technical stability of Pony Zhixing." What we want to create is a product and service that is truly based on autonomous driving technology, and in the next step, we will further optimize the experience, reduce costs, and quickly promote the productization process of autonomous driving technology. Xiaoma Zhixing co-founder and CTO Lou Tiancheng said.
The previous pilot project was still "manned", but the future will be different
Xiaoma Zhixing's plan is to implement autonomous driving mobility commercialization services in other first-tier cities by next year, and expand its successful experience to more cities by 2025.
Robotaxi/self-driving taxis are considered a new hotspot in the field of smart cars. At the quarterly earnings meeting a few days ago, Tesla said it would start launching self-driving taxis in 2023; in China, "new and old forces" such as GAC Group, SAIC Motor, and Xiaopeng Automobile have plans to develop related businesses.
It is worth noting that in the context of the players in the field of self-driving taxis are mostly vehicle companies, the identity of Xiaoma Zhixing's "automatic driving company" is more prominent. Beiqing Automobile noted that the self-driving taxi unveiled by Xiaoma Zhixing this time is based on the modification of the whole vehicle provided by a third-party car company. This is not the optimal solution for the mass production and batch operation of self-driving taxis.
At the same time, Xiaoma Zhixing's involvement in the field of self-driving taxis is all-round, with both technical support, operating platforms and even the development of payment channels, which is obviously not satisfied with being a back-end technology provider. As Pony Zhixing lands commercial services in more first-tier cities, the demand for complete vehicles will become higher and higher.
So, Pony Zhixing, can you build a car?