(Yicai) Feb. 23 -- Baidu's Apollo Go and self-driving startup Pony.ai have become the first firms to test robotaxi services at Beijing Daxing International Airport.

The robotaxi platform of the search engine giant has been given the green light to demonstrate autonomous driving on the expressway connecting Beijing’s second international airport to the capital city's urban area, as well as in certain areas of the aviation base opened in September 2019, Apollo Go revealed on its WeChat account today.

Moreover, Pony.ai announced today that it has launched robotaxi services from Daxing to Yizhuang in the Beijing Economic Development Zone, almost 50 kilometers apart.

The new services fit the bigger artificial intelligence playbook as Beijing's municipal government has revealed its plan to expand the scope of demonstration zones for a high level of autonomous driving this year and promote an orderly increase in key application scenarios involving airports, railway stations, and urban road cleaning.

Since Pony.ai got approved to test on open roads in July 2021, the startup has carried out trips on six expressways in Beijing, the Guangzhou-based firm said. The new airport line covers about 40 km of high-speed sections with more than 600 stations in the core area of Yizhuang, it added.

Since 2013, Baidu has completed more than 90 million km of autonomous driving safety tests, the Beijing-based company said. Apollo Go is already operating in five cities, including Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chongqing, and Shanghai, with more than 4.1 million orders as of Sept. 30, last year.

Editor: Emmi Laine