When you live in certain cities in America or China, you’ve probably spotted driverless cars dropping off passengers. Perhaps you’ve even ridden in a single yourself. That’s a radical change from even three years ago, when these services were still learning the foundations of the road. And robotaxis could soon be operating in lots of more cities.
In cities across China, passengers now have their pick of robotaxis operated by Baidu, AutoX, and native startups WeRide and Pony AI, amongst others, which harbor ambitious plans to expand into Singapore, the Middle East, and the US. And although driverless cars have been a standard sight on American roads for years as firms logged tens of millions of miles collecting training data, the general public has only recently begun to ride in them for real.Â
