The world’s largest experiment in driverless cars is underway on the busy streets of Wuhan, a city in central China with 11 million people, 4.5 million cars, eight-lane expressways and high bridges over the muddy waters of the Yangtze River.
A fleet of 500 computer-navigated taxis, often without safety drivers in them for backup, buzz around. The company that operates them, tech giant Baidu, said last month it would add another 1,000 so-called robot taxis to Wuhan.
Across China, 16 or more cities have allowed companies to test driverless vehicles on public roads, and at least 19 Chinese automakers and their suppliers are vying to establish global leadership in the field. No other country is moving as aggressively.
The government is offering companies substantial assistance. In addition to cities designating road-testing zones for robot taxis, censors are limiting online discussion of safety incidents and crashes to curb public fear of the nascent technology.
Surveys by JD Power, an automotive consulting firm, found that Chinese drivers are more willing than Americans to trust computers to drive their cars.
“I think you don’t need to worry too much about security – it must have passed security approval,” said Zhang Ming, the owner of a small grocery store near Wuhan’s Qingchuan Pavilion, where many Baidu robot taxis stop.
Another reason for China’s leadership in the development of driverless cars is its strict and ever-tightening control of data. Chinese companies set up important research facilities in the United States and Europe and sent the results back home. But any research in China is not allowed to leave the country. As a result, it is difficult for foreign carmakers to use what they learn in China for the cars they sell in other countries.
Then there are the safety issues. As China charges ahead, companies and regulators elsewhere have grown more cautious.
General Motors’ Cruise robot taxi service suspended service in the United States last fall after one of its cars in San Francisco hit and dragged a pedestrian who had been bumped into its path by a human driver. California regulators later suspended the company’s state license. Cruise has resumed limited testing in Phoenix.
Waymo, formerly Google’s self-driving car division, is testing more than 200 self-driving cars in suburban Phoenix and San Francisco, as well as about 50 in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. Waymo was notified twice by federal regulators last month that they were reviewing its safety.
Ford and Volkswagen shut down their robot taxi joint venture, Argo AI, two years ago, but both companies are still developing advanced assisted driving systems.
Last fall, Japan suspended its test of driverless golf carts traveling seven miles per hour after one hit the pedal of a parked bicycle. No one was hurt. Testing resumed in March.
No company has made a bigger bet on computerized driving than American automaker Tesla. But its Autopilot system for highway driving, which it introduced in 2014, and its new fully self-driving system for both road and highway driving, aren’t truly driverless. Drivers are asked to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel.
Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, announced on April 5th a “Tesla Robotaxi Reveal on 8/8”.
Many Chinese electric car manufacturers are introducing advanced power assisted driving features in their mass production cars.
On June 4, Beijing authorized nine Chinese automakers — including Nio, BYD and SAIC Motor — to begin testing advanced driving assistance systems that go beyond Tesla’s Full Self-Driving. At least initially, the tests will be conducted in restricted areas, not on public roads.
Baidu and Huawei, the electronics giant, are supplying some or all of these automated systems to many Chinese automakers. Baidu also has a joint venture with Zhejiang Geely, called Jiyue, to make robot taxis.
The Chinese Society of Automotive Engineers predicts that 20 percent of cars sold in China in 2030 will be completely driverless, and that another 70 percent will have advanced assisted driving technology.
Predicting the future popularity of driverless cars in the United States is difficult because it depends on how quickly automakers transition to electric vehicles. Driverless technology works much better with battery electric cars than with gasoline cars or most gasoline-electric hybrid cars. Electric motors can increase or decrease power with less delay and in more well-controlled steps.
In China, battery electric cars represent about 25 percent of the market, compared to 7 percent in the United States.
As with many technologies, including electric car batteries and solar panels, Chinese companies began developing driverless cars by studying American inventions, but then jumped ahead to commercializing them. In the years before the Covid-19 pandemic, more than a dozen Chinese firms set up autonomous driving research centers in California, mostly in Silicon Valley. Some, like Baidu, employed hundreds of software engineers. They received permission from the California Department of Transportation to test the cars on public roads.
These companies moved most of their research to China during the pandemic, when Beijing sealed the country’s borders but allowed top researchers to return. They have continued to work in China.
“If you take California out of the equation, China’s autonomous car industry would be nowhere near where it is now,” said Michael Dunne, an auto consultant in San Diego who specializes in China.
China has been a big market for Tesla and advanced assisted driving technologies like Autopilot. But Beijing is now cracking down on any movement of that data outside of China.
Mr Musk visited Beijing in April to seek approval for his company to offer full self-driving in China. It reached agreements to keep in China any data collected in the country and to obtain high-resolution maps of Chinese roads through a deal with Baidu.
China does not allow foreign companies direct access to high-resolution maps, which are essential for driverless systems.
Self-driving or driverless cars use small cameras mounted on their exterior, or in some cases miniature laser systems, to gather information. Most of this data is processed by the car’s computers, which make decisions about the vehicle’s direction and speed.
Although most data from in-car cameras and lasers is not uploaded to car manufacturers, the potential for tracking people and mapping sensitive locations has security experts worried.
Europe and the United States still allow manufacturers to send driving data to China, but that could change. Gina M. Raimondo, the US commerce secretary, said last month that the United States would propose rules this fall to regulate cars that were electronically linked to China. Europe has also begun to study this 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 driverless cars in these countries, Baidu has learned how traffic works, block by block, he said in a speech last month.
From coastal steam ports in southeastern China like Shenzhen and Fuzhou to metropolises in the mountains of western China like Chongqing and Chengdu, cities across China are encouraging far-reaching experiments.
Li Ti contributed to research.