Where do the billions spent on driverless cars from the United States and China go?

China is focusing on smart transport as a national growth strategy and has identified several sections of major cities for testing. “If you’re looking for the perfect place to test autonomous driving, it’s hard to beat China for its ambitions,” Dunn said.

While China and US markets are developing closely in parallel, given increased US-China competition in technology innovation and restrictions on cross-border investment, a plausible scenario is “two global ecosystems, one led by China and one , which is led by the United States with its respective systems and governments, “Dunn said.” China does not want American companies to collect data, and Chinese tests in the United States face the same problem. Chinese AV companies are likely to support research and development in the United States but will be implemented in China for China. “

In the United States, industry leaders Waymo and Cruise expect to launch their own paid driverless taxi in San Francisco soon after several months of test trips with employees. In addition, Waymo plans to extend its driverless fees to downtown Phoenix after pilots in late 2018 for paying customers in suburban Chandler.

AV start-ups have joined major carmakers and car transport services, such as Motional, set up in 2021 through a joint venture with Hyundai and pilots with Lyft. Uber has sold its self-management division, Advanced Technologies Group, to Aurora Innovation after Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick highlighted self-driving as a priority. Aurora, invested by Amazon, Hyundai and risky companies Sequoia Capital and Greylock, is working on launching a trading system for robotic trucks by the end of 2023, followed by a robotics project.

Several other market segments are emerging as differentiators from commercial robotics companies. One of the more advanced, as it seeks to diversify from its search and advertising core, Baidu delivers its Apollo Go AV “brains” to robotic buses and other transit vehicles in China, while providing carmakers with solutions for self-driving Apollo. The monthly price of Apollo Go for five years is comparable to the cost of labor of a driver transported to major cities in China, a Baidu spokesman said. The company also sells intelligent transportation solutions with projects in 34 Chinese cities to improve traffic conditions, road safety and air quality. Baidu has also partnered with Geely (Chinese owners of Volvo) to fund its JIDU smart electric vehicle business and mass production of a robot car for marketing in 2023.

The production of robo-vehicles is expensive, but is pursued as another strategy for commercialization of the market. Cruise has partnered with GM and Honda to mass-produce Origin, an all-electric self-driving, shared vehicle that is due to leave GM’s Detroit Factory Zero assembly plant within a few years. Amazon-owned Zoox has built dozens of custom electric, stand-alone robots at its Fremont plant, which are being launched gradually. Waymo is expanding its current fleet of Detroit-made I-Pacers and Chrysler Pacifica hybrids and is working with Chinese carmaker Geely to equip its all-electric, specially designed AVs for American roads in the coming years. Pony.ai recently unveiled its sixth-generation autonomous driving system, expecting to equip a seven-seater Toyota Sienna and begin road tests in China this year with a 2023 robot axle.

Robot-powered delivery services are also emerging as a viable path to commercial scale and profitability. Cruise has partnered with Walmart in the Phoenix region to deliver groceries and plans to expand the service nationwide, said Gil West, Cruise’s chief operating officer. Nuro, an autonomous startup for Silicon Valley robotics, is testing a bot service for Walmart and Kroger customers in several cities and recently added 7-Eleven customers to Mountain View. This month, Uber began pilot food deliveries through sidewalk robots and self-driving cars in Los Angeles.

For Zoox, supplying Amazon with last-mile supplies from its shuttles is a possible scenario. “We haven’t ruled this out as a use case,” said Jesse Levinson, Zoox’s technical director and co-founder. “Our business model is to charge people money to drive. The biggest price of the vehicle to share the trip is the driver. We can depreciate the price of the vehicle with these tariffs for five years. “

It may seem illogical, but the AV space for long-distance trucks is moving perhaps the fastest in this emerging market. Jim Sheinman, founder, managing partner at Maven Ventures and early investor in Cruise, noted that Embark Truck and other AV carriers will help trillions of dollars in the market in many ways. “Not only by maintaining significantly lower transport costs, which will continue to be so important in a world of ongoing supply chain problems and inflation, but also in contributing to labor shortages for long-distance transport. as well as being much greener, ”Sheinman said. “Huge victories for everyone and for the planet,” he added.

One newcomer is the Pittsburgh-based Locomation, a hybrid semi-autonomous technology for two-truck convoys, with the driver of the leading vehicle tracking the journey while another does not work in the next truck and rests. “Looking for freight trucks and a shortage of drivers is helping to solve the problem,” said Cetin Mericley, co-founder of Locomation, which is testing with three national vehicle customers. “This system can double the efficiency of drivers, keep trucks running more often and speed up deliveries,” he said. “In many ways, in 2020, our initial autonomous delivery was a trailer full of TP.”

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