AsianFin – Shanghai announced the issuance of the first permits for the demonstration of self-driving intelligent connected vehicles at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference.

Four companies—SAIC Intelligence Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., Baidu Intelligent Driving Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., AutoX (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd., and Pony.ai (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd.—have been granted these demonstration application licenses. The permits are valid from July 4, 2024, to January 4, 2025.

Currently, the demonstration applications in Shanghai are in the "free trial ride" phase, with companies configuring their vehicles for deployment. The service will soon be officially launched, though it is not yet open to the public for paid rides.