The world’s largest self-driving car test is taking place in the crowded streets of Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, 4.5 million cars, eight-lane highways and towering bridges spanning the murky waters of the Yangtze River.
A fleet of 500 computer-controlled taxis are roaming the streets without safety drivers to back them up, and tech giant Baidu, which operates the taxis, said last month it was adding 1,000 more so-called robot taxis to Wuhan.
Across China, more than 16 cities have allowed companies to test driverless cars on public roads, and at least 19 Chinese automakers and their suppliers are vying to establish global leadership in the field, more so than any other country.
Governments are providing significant support to the companies: Cities designate areas for road testing of robot taxis and censors limit online discussion of safety incidents and crashes, quelling public anxiety about the emerging technology.
A survey by automotive consulting firm J.D. Power found that Chinese drivers are more likely than their American counterparts to let computers take over the driving duties of their car.
“I don’t think there’s much need to worry about safety. It should have safety certification,” said Zhang Ming, owner of a small grocery store near Wuhan’s Qingchuange shopping mall, where many of Baidu’s robot taxis are based.
Another reason China is leading the way in developing self-driving cars is its strict and increasingly strict data controls. Chinese companies have set up significant research facilities in the U.S. and Europe and send their work back home. But research done in China isn’t allowed to leave the country. As a result, it’s hard for foreign automakers to apply what they learn in China to cars they sell in other countries.
Then there are safety concerns: As China forges ahead, companies and regulators elsewhere are becoming more cautious.
General Motors’ Cruise robot taxi service suspended its U.S. services last fall after one of its vehicles struck and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco who had been pushed into its path by a human driver. California regulators subsequently suspended the company’s state license. Cruise has resumed limited testing in Phoenix.
Waymo, the former Google self-driving car unit, is testing more than 200 self-driving cars in suburban Phoenix and San Francisco, as well as nearly 50 in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Waymo has twice received notices from federal regulators in the last month that it is under safety review.
Ford and Volkswagen shut down their robotaxi joint venture, Argo AI, two years ago, but the two companies continue to develop advanced driver-assistance systems.
Last fall, Japan halted testing of a self-driving golf cart traveling at 7 miles per hour after it crashed into the pedals of a parked bicycle. No one was injured. Testing resumed in March.
No company has put more effort into computer-guided driving than the American car maker Tesla, but neither its Autopilot system for highway driving that it introduced in 2014 nor its new Fully Self-Driving system for city and highway driving are truly driverless: drivers must keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on April 5 that the company will unveil the Tesla Robotaxi on August 8.
Many Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers are introducing advanced driver assistance features into their production vehicles.
On June 4, Beijing gave the go-ahead for nine Chinese automakers, including NIO, BYD, and SAIC Motor, to begin testing advanced driver-assistance systems that go beyond Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system. At least initially, the tests will take place in restricted areas rather than on public roads.
Baidu and electronics giant Huawei Technologies Co. supply some or all of these automation systems to many Chinese automakers. Baidu also has a joint venture with Zhejiang Geely called Jieyue to build driverless cars.
The China Society of Automotive Engineers predicts that 20% of cars sold in China in 2030 will be fully driverless, and a further 70% will be equipped with advanced driver-assistance technology.
The future adoption rate of autonomous vehicles in the United States is difficult to predict because it depends on how quickly automakers switch to electric vehicles. Self-driving technology works much better in battery electric vehicles than in gasoline cars and most hybrid gasoline electric vehicles. Electric motors can increase or decrease power output in more finely controlled increments with less lag.
In China, battery electric vehicles make up about 25% of the market, compared with 7% in the United States.
As with many technologies, such as electric car batteries and solar panels, Chinese companies began developing self-driving cars by studying American inventions, then made the leap to commercialization. In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, a dozen Chinese companies set up self-driving research centers in California, mainly in Silicon Valley. Some, like Baidu, employed hundreds of software engineers. They received permission from the California Department of Transportation to test their vehicles on public roads.
These companies moved much of their research to China during the pandemic after Beijing closed its borders but allowed key researchers to return home, where they continue to work.
“If you take California out of the equation, China’s self-driving industry will be nowhere near where it is today,” said Michael Dunn, a San Diego-based auto consultant who specializes in China.
China has become a big market for Tesla and its advanced driver-assistance technologies like Autopilot, but Beijing is now cracking down on the export of that data outside the country.
Musk visited Beijing in April to seek approval for his company to offer fully self-driving services in China, where he agreed to store data collected there and obtain high-resolution maps of Chinese roads through a deal with Baidu.
China does not allow foreign companies direct access to the high-resolution maps that are essential for driverless systems.
Assisted and autonomous cars use small, externally mounted cameras or, in some cases, small laser systems to collect information, and much of that data is processed by the car’s computers, which make decisions about steering and speed.
Although most of the data from the cars’ cameras and lasers is not uploaded to the automakers, the possibility of it being used to track people or map sensitive locations has security experts worried.
Europe and the United States still allow manufacturers to send driving data to China, but that may be changing. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo said last month that the U.S. plans to propose rules this fall to restrict cars that are electronically connected to China. Europe has also begun examining the issue.
Baidu believes it has a three- to five-year lead over Tesla in Chinese cities like Wuhan, according to Wang Yunpeng, president of Baidu’s intelligent driving business group. By operating fully self-driving cars in these places, Baidu is learning how traffic works, block by block, he said in a speech last month.
Cities across China, from steamy coastal ports in southeast China like Shenzhen and Fuzhou to mountainous metropolises in western China like Chongqing and Chengdu, are encouraging a wide range of experiments.
Li Yu contributed to the research.
