China Leads During Pandemic
Under Xi Jinping, China seems to be in a hurry for almost everything. They have already licensed several companies to operate autonomous (driverless) EVs as Uber like taxis. Is this premature or is life cheap there? But the move will be interesting and educational for the rest of the world. Also over 30 companies are deploying autonomous deliveries in China.
Most people think autonomous cars are a long way in the future. It is easy to think that the world we see every day is the same everywhere else. So Chinese consumers are getting used to seeing self driving cars on the road. What’s more, they are riding in them.
China’s Brands
China’s corporates are investing heavily in self driving technology. It is a natural fit as China is concentrating on artificial intelligence. Also it is a major manufacturing hub for the automotive industry. Didi, China’s equivalent of Uber, launched a self driving taxi service in Shanghai in June 2020. The company has about 100 autonomous taxis on the road, shuttling consumers just like Uber drivers do in the rest of the world. Recently, Didi announced that it plans to have one million self driving cars on the road by 2030. Competitors will have to keep pace.
Chinese early stage company AutoX, launched its own self driving taxi service in Shanghai mid August 2020. The service is called RoboTaxi, and it also has about 100 cars on the road. AutoX and Didi give Chinese consumers two self driving services to choose from in Shanghai. Also Baidu, WeRide, and Pony.ai each have their own self driving taxi services in other Chinese cities.
Where is Tesla?
US testing has been shut down because of Covid 19, so Google’s Waymo and others are stalled. However, Tesla already has roughly 800,000 autopilot enabled cars on the road to date. And that will probably rise to one million by the end of 2020. A million cars on the road in the U.S., capable of autonomous driving before December 2020, not in 10 years! These cars have the necessary hardware for fully autonomous driving. They just need a software upgrade to be transformed into self driving vehicles. It won’t be the final stage 5, when there is no steering wheel, accelerator or brake!
Next
This will be the beginning of SAV (Shared Autonomous Vehicle) networks. As I mentioned in a previous blog, estimates indicate autonomous EVs could save the US economy US$1.3 trillion every year. How? Mainly through saving around 50,000 lives, hospital costs for many thousands more, lower insurance, car maintenance, unproductive driving time, looking for parking, etc. Another blog?
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I had no idea about this! Thanks, Campbell.
Thanks, Campbell, for this info! Passenger’s trust in AI must be higher than I would have thought. My Volvo does some autonomous stuff like parking, but I have been reluctant to let it loose as yet. It gives me the parking guidance info from the radar and cameras, and I do the driving- the day I get it wrong, I’ll hand over to the AI….
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