Rita Liao writing for Tech Crunch has done an analysis of the Chinese robotaxi startups who are in an arms race to put passengers in their machine-driven vehicles. As she notes, “Every few weeks, news arrives that another major player has got the green light to launch a new pilot program or a small-scale service.”
She continues, “These press releases, often dotted with regulatory jargon and flowery language to aggrandize the companies’ progress, can be confusing. That’s why we put together this post summarizing the progress of China’s major robotaxi operators — AutoX, Baidu, Deeproute.ai, Didi, Momenta, Pony.ai and WeRide — in 2021 while trying to parse what their announcements actually mean.
Most of the major players have been testing drivered (autonomous vehicles with in-car safety operators) and driverless vehicles for some time in China, so this post will focus on their public-facing services that run on a regular basis. While navigating the costs, safety and regulations around robotaxis, these companies have also dabbled into areas that are quicker to scale, such as self-driving trucks, goods-hauling vans and city buses, though robotaxis remain their focus in the long run.
Road conditions in the country can vary greatly. An autonomous driving test that takes place in an industrial park in suburban Shenzhen, for instance, will encounter much simpler traffic than one that runs in a meandering urban village downtown.
Regulations on autonomous vehicles can differ across provinces — and even different districts within the same city. A company that obtains approval to run a fully driverless test in one city isn’t necessarily more technologically advanced than its peers; it could simply mean it’s cozy with a local regulator with a progressive attitude toward self-driving.
Some regional governments are targeting smart transportation as their growth strategy. Naturally, they are keen to support autonomous vehicle startups. Authorities may give an informal nod to unmanned driving tests in their jurisdictions well before national or city-level regulations are rubber stamped.
Government support can also manifest in ways like tax breaks, access to favorable land use and cheap office space. That’s in part why China’s major autonomous vehicle startups are concentrated in well-resourced cities like Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Suzhou.”
For the complete article on the Chinese robotaxi start-ups CLICK HERE.
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