On May 4, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev requested that driverless cars be tested on a segment of the Moscow-St. Petersburg highway by November this year.
The project involves the Federal Road Agency (‘Rosavtodor’) and state company Russian Highways (‘Avtodor’) as well as a working group that includes Yandex — the Russian search giant which unveiled its driverless car prototype last year, — car manufacturer AvtoVAZ and telecom operator MegaFon.
Currently, Yandex is testing its unmanned vehicles only in the presence of a human driver, as reported by VC.ru. The company is currently testing its vehicles in urban areas, with no immediate plans to test them on the Moscow-St. Petersburg road.
“We support any authorization for testing the cars on public roads, however, we are not planning to engage in this particular one, since our priority is to address the most difficult context for unmanned driving, which is the urban environment,” reported VC.ru, citing exchanges with the company.
In late 2017, Yandex tested its unmanned vehicles on the snow-covered roads of the Moscow Region “for the first time in history.”
On its side, Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow, started testing Russia’s first electronic driverless buses in 2016.
This past summer, the Russian government announced its intention to create an IT and telecom infrastructure for driverless transport across the country’s roads and highways.
