Assisted driving systems and robot taxis are becoming more popular with government help, as cities designate large areas for testing on public roads.
A Baidu driverless robot taxi with nobody in the front seats traveling in Wuhan, China, last month.Credit…Qilai Shen for The New York Times
The world’s largest experiment in driverless cars is underway on the busy streets of Wuhan, a city in central China with 11 million people, 4.5 million cars, eight-lane expressways and towering bridges over the muddy waters of the Yangtze River.
A fleet of 500 taxis navigated by computers, often with no safety drivers in them for backup, buzz around. The company that operates them, the tech giant Baidu, said last month that it would add a further 1,000 of the so-called robot taxis in Wuhan.
Across China, 16 or more cities have allowed companies to test driverless vehicles on public roads, and at least 19 Chinese automakers and their suppliers are competing to establish global leadership in the field. No other country is moving as aggressively.
The government is providing the companies significant help. In addition to cities designating on-road testing areas for robot taxis, censors are limiting online discussion of safety incidents and crashes to restrain public fears about the nascent technology.
Surveys by J.D. Power, an automotive consulting firm, found that Chinese drivers are more willing than Americans to trust computers to guide their cars.
“I think there’s no need to worry too much about safety — it must have passed safety approval,” said Zhang Ming, the owner of a small grocery store near Wuhan’s Qingchuan Pavilion, where many Baidu robot taxis stop.
Another reason for China’s lead in the development of driverless cars is its strict and ever-tightening control of data. Chinese companies set up crucial research facilities in the United States and Europe and sent the results back home. But any research in China is not allowed to leave the country. As a result, it’s difficult for foreign carmakers to use what they learn in China for cars they sell in other countries.
Then there are the safety issues. As China charges ahead, companies and regulators elsewhere have become more cautious.
The Cruise robot taxi service of General Motors halted service in the United States last fall after one of its cars in San Francisco hit and dragged a pedestrian who had been knocked into its path by a human driver. California regulators later suspended the company’s state license. Cruise has resumed limited testing in Phoenix.
Waymo, formerly Google’s self-driving car division, is testing more than 200 self-driving cars in the Phoenix suburbs and in San Francisco, as well as nearly 50 in Los Angeles and in Austin, Texas. Waymo was notified twice by federal regulators last month that they were reviewing its safety.
Ford and Volkswagen shut down their robot taxi joint venture, Argo AI, two years ago, but both companies are still developing advanced assisted driving systems.
Last fall, Japan suspended its test of driverless golf carts that travel seven miles per hour after one of them hit the pedal of a parked bicycle. No one was injured. The testing resumed in March.
