Robovan, the future self-driving van from WeRide

WeRide, a specialist in autonomous vehicles, is taking on the chal-lenge of putting "Robovan", a Level 4 autonomous van, on the road.

For this pilot project, the Chinese startup has partnered with car manu-facturer Jiangling Motors (JMC) and delivery company ZTO Express. The second stage of the project will see the driverless van go into mass production.

Valued at 3.3 billion USD, WeRide was founded in 2017. It has already developed "Robobus" an autonomous bus without a steering wheel nor pedals. It has also conducted tests on robot cabs in Guangzhou, China. Available to the public since 2019, these cabs have transported 60 000 passengers and delivered 147 128 rides in the first year of launch.

The start-up also has been granted approval from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to test autonomous cars without a safety operator in San Jose.