(Yicai) Sept. 7 -- Wuhan is now the third Chinese city after Beijing and Shanghai to grant permits to more than 1,000 autonomous driving cars after internet giant Baidu received licenses for its fleet earlier this week.

Wuhan started issuing road transport permits for autonomous driving vehicles in September 2019 and 19 companies have received licenses so far, Chen Li, vice director of Wuhan's inter-departmental working group for new energy and intelligent connected vehicles affairs, told Yicai.

But only Beijing-based Baidu and Dongfeng Motor have received licenses to operate, which allow the autos to run on open roads depending on the routes negotiated with the local government and the road conditions, he added.

In the past four years, Wuhan has expanded its driving zone for unmanned vehicles seven times. The city has more than 1,400 kilometers of roads open to self-driving tests, covering an area of 1,100 square kilometers and serving a resident population of over four million people. Over 340 cars are operating or being tested in the area and they have carried more than 420,000 passengers.

Cars capable of high-level autonomous driving have started running on roads with complicated conditions in some Chinese cities, and more robotaxis with a Level-Four self-driving level will operating by 2025, said Li Zhenyu, senior corporate vice president of Baidu.

Over 30 cities, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chongqing, allow firms to carry out self-driving tests on roads, said Yu Mingyuan, former director of the transport development center under the Ministry of Transport's Research Institute of Highway Ministry of Transport. The commercial use of self-driving cars is speeding up.

Robotaxis will account for 22 percent of the market by 2027, up from 3 percent now, as policies relax further, Yu said. And the ratio could top 50 percent by 2030.

Autonomous driving, however, faces challenges from the perspective of legislation, safety management and actual operation, said Huang Jinjing, head of the regulatory affairs office under the Ministry of Public Security's road traffic safety research center.

The legal obligations of those using autonomous driving cars are still unclear, there is still no system to deal with accidents and violations of the law involving these autos, and autonomous driving has yet to be integrated into the existing road safety management code.

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Kim Taylor