GM's shutdown of Cruise was the end of an era for them, but robotaxis are roaring ahead in the U.S. and China — in sharply different ways. Here's a deep dive.
is being shut down, it marked the end of a years-long foray into GM’s soaring visions of a new mobility economy. This mirrors Ford and Volkswagen’s decision in 2022 to dissolve Argo.ai and apply that company’s engineering talent to developing advanced ADAS, i.e. Level 3 systems that do not require sustained attention by the driver.
But the robotaxi action in the U.S. is only a part of the picture. A vibrant robotaxi scene is roaring ahead in China, consisting of multiple well-funded players.Over the years I’ve done my best to understand and report on the autonomy situation in the People’s Republic of China , but I’ve always felt that my efforts just scratched the surface.. Fluent in Chinese, he can scour the Chinese-language web to get insights and identify nuances that may not be apparent to the rest of us.
Recently, there have been some misleading articles in the English-language press stating the Baidu will break even next year. Thanks to Matt, a closer look on the Chinese web provides clarity: “According to the head of Baidu’s autonomous driving unit, Chen Zhuo, Apollo Go is only expected to break even in the city of Wuhan, where Baidu first began to deploy its fleet,” Matt reports.
In August 2023, Pony AI formed a joint venture with Toyota Motor Investment Co., Ltd. and GAC Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. to mass produce robotaxis to support large-scale deployment. GTMC will provide Pony.ai with Toyota-branded battery electric vehicles, which are equipped with Toyota’s vehicle redundant systems that are suitable for L4 autonomous driving.
WeRide claims 1,200 days without any proactive safety incidents, and an accident-free track record across all of its global operations. Matt’s research shows that in 2019, WeRide introduced the term “iron triangle” to refer to the company’s vision of robotaxi development as an alliance between autonomous technology companies, OEM, and mobility platforms. Other robotaxi ventures in China which haveWeRide has introduced variations on this theme as well. For example, combining its technology with existing taxi fleets, as it did in Guangzhou with Baiyun Taxi Group in 2019.
Nevertheless, the market will remain “warped” in the U.S. due to concerns about Chinese tech companies spying. The U.S. government wants no part of roving tech devices gathering data on U.S. cities. This leaves us with the in-country players. Having a single dominant player in any tech space is not ideal. Yet, Waymo’s performance and growth is fascinating to watch. In San Francisco, their market share is now equal to Lyft. Incredible.
Autonomous Driving Driverless Cars Waymo Baidu Weride Ponyai Alphabet Zoox GM
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