Baidu and Pony.ai became the first robotaxi services to operate without safety drivers in Beijing,

Baidu and Pony.ai have been granted authorization to run their autonomous vehicles in Beijing without the use of safety drivers, a first for robotaxi services in China (via CNBC). Although neither company need a driver, they will still want a supervisor to be present somewhere in the car.

Baidu and Pony.ai are now confined to a 60 square kilometre (23.1 square mile) region of Yizhuang, Beijing, which has a population of around 300,000 people. While Baidu can only deploy ten autonomous vehicles in the region, Pony.ai, according to CNBC, can only run four. Both businesses intend to increase the number of vehicles on the road (with Baidu aiming for 30), but it’s unclear when that will happen.

Last November, Beijing officials began allowing Baidu and Pony.ai to charge for their robotaxi services in the Yizhuang neighbourhood of Beijing, despite the fact that the city previously required both services to have a safety driver behind the wheel. According to TechCrunch, users may hail either robotaxi service from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. using Baidu’s Apollo Go app, or from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. using Pony.ai’s PonyPilot Plus app.

Last week, Toyota-backed Pony.ai became China’s first autonomous car business to receive a taxi licence. It has been granted authorization to run 100 cars in Nansha, Guangzhou, and has stated that a safety driver would be on board for a limited time. Pony.ai was also granted permission to test its autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in three California locations, but this permission was revoked when one of its vehicles crashed with a centre divider.

Baidu, the firm behind the enormous Chinese search engine of the same name, was also granted permission to test its vehicles in Sunnyvale, California, without safety drivers. It joins a number of other self-driving car startups, such as Waymo and Cruise, that can operate completely driverless vehicles on California’s streets.