AI-powered mobility company WeRide is ready for its intelligent connected vehicle road test in southern China’s Guangdong Province, Xinhua reported.
The company has obtained 20 provisional license plates issued by the public security bureau of Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong, WeRide announced.
WeRide started 5G-related cooperation with China Unicom, one of the country’s three leading telecommunications operators, last year. They jointly built a lab on the R&D of cutting-edge applications of 5G-based autonomous driving, which has so far made a dent in remote control and edge computing, the report said.
Founded in 2017, the Guangzhou-based autonomous driving company received Series A funding last October led by Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi.
The company released its pre-commercialized Level 4 self-driving solutions and the latest L4 autopilot model in March.
“We have developed the latest L4 autopilot model based on Nissan LEAF 2, which is an important milestone,” said Tony Han, WeRide’s co-founder and CEO.
According to radiichina.com, the Chinese market is more ready than much of the rest of the world to accept autonomous driving.
In Nielsen’s “2018 Autonomous Driving Syndicated Report,” it found that for reasons such as freeing up hands, reducing fatigue and enhanced safety, more than 80% of Chinese car owners intend to purchase self-driving cars made by conventional automakers as soon as they become available.
For the upper strata of Chinese society (those who own cars valued at over 1 million RMB, approximately US$150,000), that figure rises to 94% of consumers.