Pony.ai: delivery service pilotless cars

2020: Start in California

As it became known in April, 2020, the Chinese developer of Pony.ai unmanned vehicles began to perform the "contactless" product delivery of a power supply in the Californian city of Irvayn which number is about 200 thousand inhabitants. The project was started in partnership with the Los Angeles online store Yamibuy on which Americans buy food from Asia.

The company considers that such delivery mode will be demanded among Americans from about 90% owing to whom pandemic of a koronavirusny infection are forced to remain in the dwellings.

Pony.ai began to perform the "contactless" product delivery of a power supply in the Californian city of Irvayn which number is about 200 thousand inhabitants

Cooperation with Yamibuy allowed us to make a big step forward in respect of commercialization of pilotless trips and offered new prospects for the logistic industry — contains in the statement of a startup.

Having got rid of need to employ drivers, Pony.ai, nevertheless, could not organize process completely without participation of the person — on each departure in the car there is a courier who unloads the order and brings him to the customer's threshold. At the same time the courier does not take part in control of the autonomous vehicle.

As of April, 2020 the startup in Irvine has 10 unmanned vehicles. For one trip they can contain till 10-20 packets with food and in a day to carry up to 100 orders. For delivery electric vehicles Kona productions are used Huyndai.

To this Pony.ai used the self-propelled cars only for transportation of passengers in which in California is engaged since November, 2019. It is the service first in own way in the state allowing inhabitants to use the autonomous Huyndai cars as the taxi for single trips and to use the general base of cars for commission of trips with other users, doing the order through mobile application.

In March, 2020 the company announced suspension of passenger traffic in Irvine and other Californian city of Fremont for 3 weeks.^[1]

Robotics

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