American companies led by Alphabet’s Waymo have drawn much of the limelight with driverless cars deployed almost entirely on home soil. Now that some are beginning to look abroad, they’ll have to share roads with Chinese companies quietly making plenty of progress.
Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide and Pony AI are outnumbering their American counterparts with more "robotaxi" projects progressing from testing to various stages of commercialization, according to a BloombergNEF analysis. While much of that headway is being made domestically, the Chinese companies are standing up operations in places like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and looking to launch in Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe.
Comparing autonomous-vehicles companies’ progress isn’t a straightforward exercise — the industry has been synonymous with false dawns and unfulfilled promises. Players that have looked promising and raised billions at rich valuations have been doomed by singular crashes they never recovered from, or been cut off by benefactors that have lost patience.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.