At MOVE 2024 this morning Dr. James Peng the co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai took to the keynote stage to discuss the future of mobility and emerging power of autonomous vehicles.
With Pony.ai’s driverless robotaxi operations already taking place in California, Arizona and three major cities in China, Peng elaborated on where he is going to expand next.
“There is global demand for cheaper more reliable safer mobility options, currently we are looking in the middle eastern region, we have established a joint venture with NEOM,” said Peng.
Pony.ai received $100m investment from NEOM – Saudi Arabia’s futuristic city and development project – back in November last year after they formed a joint venture.
Peng continued to discuss Pony.ai’s recent European expansion with Luxembourg.
“Europe is a great market but the challenge here is too many countries and too many different types of regulations, our first step into Europe is in Luxembourg.
But why choose why choose Luxembourg?
Peng said: “The European market has huge potential and already has really good public transportation and pre-existing taxi and fleet services. It’s also a small country with an open-minded government. So we can use this as a launch pad go into other countries.”
He also noted the most difficult part of developing autonomous vehicles.
“The most difficult thing about developing autonomous vehicles this the irrational behaviour of people. The potholes, the obstructions can all be detected. Anything static has a way of being dealt with. The irrational behaviour of people requires a decision in the split of a second, once we deal with this we can be more adaptable to other cities.”
