Autonomous driving cars travel over 150,000 km in Beijing in 2018

BEIJING -- Beijing Municipality saw 56 self-driving vehicles traveling a total of more than 153,000 km on its roads in 2018, according to an official report.

The country's search giant Baidu's fleet accounted for over 80 percent of the total number of tested self-driving cars in 2018, according to the report by Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport.

Other participants in the road tests include Shanghai-based electric car startup Nio, Beijing-based self-driving car company Pony.ai, as well as German carmakers Daimler and Audi.

The report also noted that the capital will increase the number of roads used for self-driving tests, citing a plan that sets goals to reach 500 square km of area and 2,000 km of open roads for testing intelligent connected vehicles (ICVs) by 2022.

China allowed local governments to arrange road tests for ICVs, which cover different degrees of autonomous driving, in April 2018. In May, German carmaker BMW became the first foreign automaker to receive a self-driving road test license in China.

Many Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, have issued car plates for road tests of ICVs.