BEIJING -- China's autonomous driving technology developer, Pony.ai, announced on Monday that the firm had been granted permission to initiate expressway testing of unmanned truck platoons, the first such testing in China.

The platoons, led by manned vehicles, start self-driving freight-service testing on the Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu expressway.

Pony.ai's autonomous trucks, which transport goods daily between Beijing and Tianjin in the north of China, have delivered nearly 500 TEUs (standard container units) of real freight orders and accumulated over 45,000 km of autonomous driving mileage on this route, according to the Nasdaq-listed tech firm.

By the end of 2024, its autonomous trucks had amassed more than 5 million kilometers of road-testing mileage and transported over 860 million ton-km of cargo.

Pony.ai now offers paid autonomous shuttle services at Beijing Daxing International Airport and conducts autonomous driving tests on key high-speed routes linked to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.

This month, Pony.ai announced its plan to start robotaxi services at the international airport in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The scale of robotaxi placement in China is expected to reach 100,000 vehicles by 2030 -- when the robotaxi share of the overall travel market is set to be between about 10 percent and 20 percent, Pony.ai said.

The value of China's self-driving taxi service industry is expected to amount to 1.3 trillion yuan ($180 billion) by 2030, accounting for 60 percent of the country's ride-hailing market at that time, according to forecasts from global consultancy firm IHS Markit.