Faster, more intelligent and more affordable -- a bus fleet, equipped with a homegrown navigation system and other technologies, is providing a hailing service for 120,000 residents in the central Chinese city of Zhuzhou.

With only 2 yuan (about 28 U.S. cents), residents can make a quick online reservation to hail a bus by phone and board within five to 10 minutes, using nearly 100 "virtual bus stops."

According to the bus fleet's operator, these buses were put into trial operation in mid-October and ran from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in a region where nine vocational education colleges and other residential communities are located.

Developed by the Chinese automaker CRRC Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd., such buses are 5.33 meters in length and empowered by technologies including the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and big-data analysis.

According to the company, they can travel on narrow highways, and without fixed routes or designated stops. Through the company's self-developed reservation platform, a driving route can be automatically tailored for passengers.

When multiple ride requests are received, the platform combines nearby or similar destinations to create an efficient shared route. This way, buses can be precisely dispatched to provide direct, point-to-point service, allowing each trip to respond flexibly to real-time needs rather than following pre-determined stops.

Such a bus fleet not only advances low-carbon transit but also enhances intelligent transit operations, said Liu Weidong, deputy general manager of Zhuzhou Bus, adding that it has great potential, considering the applications in urban communities and remote industrial parks.

China owns an extensive urban public transportation system. By the end of 2023, the country had 79,800 urban public bus operating lines, with a total length of 1.73 million km, Wang Xiuchun, an official with the Ministry of Transport, told a press conference Thursday.

A total of 682,000 buses are under operation, about 81 percent of which are new-energy vehicles, she said, adding that many cities have customized bus routes for specific communities with new technologies and equipment, and have enabled intelligent transformations such as real-time travel information access and convenient mobile payment options.

Xiong Gang, a technician with CRRC Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd., said that they are considering equipping the bus fleet in Zhuzhou with L4 driving, which stands for high automation, in the future.