NHTSA to review Pony.ai's self-driving accident report

       According to foreign media reports, on March 29, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it would investigate whether the autonomous driving startup Pony.ai complied with the government's reporting requirements for driverless traffic accidents, namely whether the "timeliness and accuracy of the reports" met the requirements.

(Image source: Pony.ai)

       On October 28 last year, in Fremont, California, a Pony.ai self-driving test vehicle crashed into a road sign in the middle lane after turning right, causing California to suspend the company's driverless test license in December last year. Last year, Pony.ai registered 10 Hyundai Kona electric vehicles under its driverless test license, and the suspension of the driverless test license had no impact on Pony.ai's self-driving tests with human safety officers.

       Pony.ai said the collision occurred less than 2.5 seconds after the ADS was turned off. The company said that in very rare cases, the vehicle system diagnostic check "may produce a 'false positive' indication of a mismatched geographic location." NHTSA believes that some versions of Pony.ai's autonomous driving software have safety defects and requires the company to recall them. Earlier this month, Pony.ai agreed to recall some versions of its autonomous driving system software, involving its three autonomous driving test vehicles.

       On March 29, Pony.ai said that the company had reported the incident to NHTSA in a "good faith effort to comply with relevant requirements" and had been fully cooperating with NHTSA throughout the process. Pony.ai also revealed that the company had updated the software code and its three affected self-driving cars had been fixed.

       Earlier this month, Pony.ai announced that it had completed its latest round of financing, with a valuation of US$8.5 billion.