Yandex self-driving cars to take part in state experiment

MOSCOW, Nov 27 (PRIME) -- Driverless cars of Russian Internet company Yandex will participate in an experiment with self-driving cars on public roads in Moscow and the republic of Tatarstan, on the Volga, a company spokesperson told PRIME on Tuesday.

“Yandex will take part in the tests to expand the zones and conditions of the driverless technology test. We’ve talked many times about the necessity of such an initiative and are glad that it has been adopted. We hope the ruling would make it possible to test it fully,” the spokesperson said.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that he had signed a ruling on testing self-driving cars on public roads in some spots of Moscow and Tatarstan starting from Saturday.

Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov said then that there will be 100 highly-automated vehicles assisted with drivers in case of emergency. The test will be over on March 1, 2022.

Yandex did not disclose the number of existing self-driving cars, but the spokesperson said there will be over 100 in 2019.

The company has been working on the driverless technology since 2016 and its self-driving car debuted on a Moscow road in February and drove 789 kilometers in June from the capital to the city of Kazan, the capital of the republic of Tatarstan.

In August Yandex started testing the technology in the city of Innopolis, in the republic of Tatarstan.

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