The time when cars could go fully driverless is coming “very soon,” according to Jianxiong Xiao, the CEO and founder of AutoX, a Shenzhen-based start-up working on autonomous driving technology.
Presently, most regulations throughout various cities in China still need the presence of a safety driver in vehicles, but the company predicts that as more data gets captured over time, that requirement would be decreased, Xiao told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia”.
The autonomous driving tech firm has partnered with Alibaba’s AMAP — a Chinese mapping service provider — to present its RoboTaxi ride hailing service in Shanghai on Monday. AMAP is a “super mobility app” with nearly 500 million active monthly users, according to Xiao.
AutoX had gained approval from Shanghai authorities to present a fleet of 100 autonomous ride-hailing cars in Shanghai’s Jiading district in September last year.
Previously this month, AutoX said that it had set up an 80,000 square feet RoboTaxi operations center located in Shanghai to help facilitate operations of its driverless fleet, and also act as a center to collect data from daily operations. The center is also able to store data obtained from simulation cloud computers operating virtual tests non-stop, according to a South China Morning Post report citing AutoX.
AutoX, backed by companies such as Alibaba, Shanghai Motor and Dongfeng Motor, is one of the players in the trillion U.S. dollar Chinese autonomous driving vehicles market together with others like DiDi Chuxing.
Xiao said they were working with the technology to make sure the vehicles were “very, very safe” and are conducting a lot of testing.
More than a hundred vehicles have been deployed on roads daily to capture enough data required to validate the software and system, according to Xiao.
Xiao added that the company was also running a hundred times more simulations in the car on daily basis, and the “huge amount of data” would help to prove that the automobiles could be used in “full safety.”
“Our goal is not to just make (it) as safe as human beings, but going one step forward to really make … a superhuman safety standard; (cars) that (can) drive much safer than any human being ever,” Xiao added.
