The concept of self-driving cars has recently reached the next-step commercially in China with the company PonyA.I. Becoming the first company granted permission to operate artificial intelligence taxis without safety drivers, making the only people in the vehicle the passengers. 

Robotaxis would typically have a safety driver while the car drives itself to ensure the safety of the vehicle and passengers. 

PonyA.I Is a autonomous vehicle start-up company, with the goal of delivering autonomous mobility everywhere through the creation of reliable autonomous driving technology.

PonyA.I was started up in December of 2016 with an initial funding of one billion dollars, which has now been reevaluated at more than eight billion dollars. 

PonyA.I is based primarily in China but is expanding its availability across the United States having availability in California.

The prices of their taxis vary in price depending on the location’s standard taxi prices. People are only able to order and ride these taxis through the PonyPilot+ application.

WJPS teacher, Ms. Bonnani stated, “I think New York City wouldn’t be a good area to experiment with self driving taxis with so much traffic, it’d be a hazard, They should implement first in smaller areas I think it’s too early.”

WJPS junior, John Bolanos said, “There’d be a loss of jobs and most likely some accidents involving the cars. I don’t think it’d be a good idea to implement it in the U.S.”

“new york taxis” by ShedBOy^ is marked with CC BY 2.0.