Pony.ai has formed a joint venture with Sinotrans, a Chinese logistics and freight forwarding company, to build a smart logistics network featuring autonomous driving technologies.

PonyTron, the autonomous trucking business unit of Pony.ai, and Sinotrans expect to commence operations in early 2022 with an intelligent logistics fleet consisting of over 100 trucks. Over time this fleet size is expected to grow, incorporating advances in autonomous driving and logistics technologies.

Created in late 2020, PonyTron has obtained driverless trucking road test licenses in both Guangzhou and Beijing, a permit to test self-driving trucks on Beijing’s highways, and a license to offer commercial road transport services in China. In December, Pony.ai tested its PonyTron autonomous truck on a highway in Beijing, the first time a self-driving company had conducted autonomous trucking tests on an open highway in China.

“Intelligent technologies are driving the transformation of mobility and transportation. Sinotrans is a world-leading logistics firm and Pony.ai offers world-class autonomous driving technologies. This strong partnership will create a benchmark for the massive commercial deployment of autonomous technologies, and will improve the efficiency and quality of the logistics sector. In addition, these technologies will add significant safety and environmental benefits to the trucking sector in China. We are delighted to shape the future of logistics together with Sinotrans,” said James Peng, co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai.

“This innovative combination of an autonomous vehicle technology company together with a traditional logistics company will certainly inspire the transformation of the logistics sector. By forming an intelligent logistics platform, the two companies will join hands to tackle the core problems in both the autonomous driving and logistics sectors. We firmly believe that technological development will further strengthen the logistics sector and the entire industrial chain,” said Song Rong, Executive Director and President of Sinotrans.

“The joint venture with Sinotrans will provide real life logistics scenarios to fully test and leverage our ‘virtual driver’ capabilities as trucking in China combines both the complexities of highway trucking and city trucking. We will be able to accumulate a massive amount of useful data, representing the full complexity of trucking traffic patterns, from open highways to downtown urban settings, which will be a great catalyst for the development of autonomous driving technology,” said Tiancheng Lou, co-founder and CTO of Pony.ai.

In June 2021, PonyTron and Sinotrans launched a pilot programme testing autonomous driving technologies for long-haul logistics, which laid the foundations for a joint venture between the two companies.