Pony.ai’s license to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in California is revoked

Pony.ai, an autonomous automobile startup primarily based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China, is now not in a position to check its automobiles in California after the state’s Division of Motor Automobiles revoked the corporate’s license for “quite a few” security violations. The information was first reported by TechCrunch.

The difficulty is that the corporate’s workforce of security drivers should not very secure drivers. The DMV mentioned that, whereas reviewing Pony.ai’s testing license, it discovered “quite a few violations” on the driving data of the corporate’s security drivers. Pony.ai presently has 41 autonomous automobiles and 71 security drivers registered on its allow in California.

“Due to the crucial function of security drivers to facilitate the secure testing of autonomous know-how and the necessity for these drivers to have a clear driving file as established by the DMV’s autonomous automobile laws, the DMV is revoking the allow, efficient instantly,” a DMV spokesperson mentioned.

This isn’t the primary time that Poiny.ai has run afoul of the California DMV, a state company that manages one of many largest AV testing applications within the nation. Final 12 months, the corporate’s allow to check driverless automobiles — autonomous automobiles with out security drivers — was suspended after a reported automobile collision in Fremont, California.

A spokesperson for Pony.ai mentioned the DMV revoked the allow as a result of three of its security drivers had problematic driving data. “Pony.ai approaches the event of autonomous automobile know-how with security as our basis, and we’re happy with our security file,” the spokesperson mentioned in an e mail. “Pony.ai has pushed over 6.8 million real-world autonomous miles, wherein no accidents have occurred.”

This represents a critical hurdle to Pony’s business plans within the state. Shortly after receiving its driverless testing allow final 12 months, Pony.ai founder and CEO James Peng informed The Verge that the corporate was additionally looking for approval to incorporate these automobiles in its robotaxi service in California. “We are literally on the closing stage of getting the approval for vacationers,” he mentioned.

Pony.ai was valued at $3 billion after a $400 million funding from Toyota final 12 months. The corporate has been testing autonomous automobiles within the Chinese language cities of Beijing and Guangzhou since late 2018 in addition to in Fremont and Irvine in California. Pony lately obtained a allow to function its autonomous taxi service in China, making it the primary firm to win the nation’s approval.