FREMONT — The ponies are coming.
Pony.ai, a Fremont-based self-driving car technology company that also operates in China, has been cleared by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test driverless cars on the streets of Fremont, Milpitas, and Irvine.
The DMV announced late last week it issued the permit, noting that Pony.ai is the eighth company to receive a driverless testing permit in California.
The company, which was founded in Fremont in 2016 by James Peng and Tiancheng Lou, both formerly of Baidu and Google, has been testing cars equipped with its self-driving technology suite since 2017.
However, in those tests, a “safety driver” was always behind the wheel to take over if something unexpected happened while on the road. A total of 55 companies are cleared to do that kind of testing in the state.
The new permit means up to six cars running Pony.ai’s software on city streets will have no one behind the wheel, though there are some limitations to the testing.
The cars and software Pony.ai will be testing are designed to operate on roads with posted speed limits 45 miles per hour and slower, in clear weather and light precipitation, according to a statement from the DMV.
Testing will initially happen in Fremont and Milpitas, on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., the DMV said.
To get a driverless testing permit, companies must certify that they “meet a number of safety, insurance and vehicle registration requirements,” according to the DMV, including having insurance or a bond equal to $5 million, verifying vehicles are capable of operating without a driver, and notifying local governments of the planned tests.
According to mandated reports sent to the DMV, Pony.ai’s cars with safety drivers have been involved in a total of five collisions between June 2019 and February 2021, with no injuries. In three of those cases, Pony.ai reported their cars were stopped in traffic and were rear-ended by another driver, and in one case another driver reversed into the front of a test car.
In June 2019, the company said one of its cars was driving in the affluent Cameron Hills neighborhood of Fremont, when the driver of a Tesla Model 3 went into the opposing lane to pass the car, cut back in front of the Pony.ai car, and “suddenly decelerated.” Though the safety driver took over and hit the brakes, the car rear-ended the Tesla.
Between 2018 and 2020, the company also reported to the DMV that it had a total of 63 “disengagement” events — any time in which the human safety driver took over from the software for a variety of reasons.
Pony.ai has raised over $1 billion from various investors, including more than $400 million from Toyota, according to the company.
The company says it has run “robotaxi” test operations, with safety drivers behind the wheel in Irvine, and larger scale robotaxi fleet tests in China, in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing. It also used its technology testing for food package and grocery delivery services during the pandemic in both Fremont and Irvine.
The company also announced a pilot commuter program in Fremont just before the pandemic lockdown orders hit, offering rides for a group of Fremont city employees from Fremont’s Amtrak/ACE Station to city hall and the city’s development services center.
Pony.ai said in a recent press release that it is “set to deploy automotive-grade production autonomous fleets in 2023 globally.”
The other companies with a permit for driverless car testing in California are AutoX, Baidu, San Francisco- founded Cruise, which was acquired by General Motors and has investment from Honda and Microsoft, Nuro, Google-owned Waymo, WeRide, and Zoox, according to the DMV.
