A robotaxi operated by Baidu's Apollo Go waits at a traffic light in Yizhuang, a tech hub in southeast Beijing, on August 7 (ZHANG WEI)

For science fiction aficionados, driverless cars have long been one of the most iconic and recognizable motifs of the future.From Herbie, the adorable Volkswagen Beetle in The Love Bug (1969), to the vengeful Plymouth Fury in Christine (1983), to the Batmobile roaring through the streets of Gotham City, autonomous driving has long captured the human imagination with its ability to redefine people’s relationship with vehicles, as well as its terrifying potential to spin out of control.

This longstanding fantasy has recently become a reality in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, a suburb commonly known as Yizhuang in southeast Beijing. Once a quiet rural town covered in farmland, Yizhuang has transformed into areal-life cyberpunk tech hub where swarms of driverless robotaxis gingerly roam.

These robotaxis offer an experience that is surprisingly like traditional ride-hailing services, except thatthere is no one behind the wheel. From the outside, it resembles a regular taxi, except for the many sensors,radars and cameras mounted all over its body.

With these gadgets, the car can steer, stop, shift gears, change lanes and navigate busy stop-and-go traffic all by itself. On the display built into the backs of the front seats, riders can see a highly detailed map of everything—pedestrians, cars and buildings—the vehicle spots.

Like it or not, the future is here.

Switching gears

A majority of the robotaxis running within the area are operated by Apollo Go, a robotaxi ride-hailing service launched in 2021 by Baidu, the tech giant behind China’s most popular search engine.

While most of Apollo Go’s robotaxis in Yizhuang come with a safety operator ready to take over if something goes wrong, a limited number of lucky and particularly brave people will get the chance to ride in a fully driverless cab. “You cannot choose whether the cab comes with a safety operator. It's like opening a mystery box,” Zhao Anlin, a 25-year-old car enthusiast from Yizhuang, told Beijing Review. For Zhao, taking robotaxi rides has become a daily routine and even a kind of addiction. “Sometimes, I’ll repeatedly place and cancel orders until I get a fully driverless taxi,” he said.

For most people, however, the most attractive feature of a robotaxi at this stage is the heavily discounted price, which is part of the company’s strategy to attract more first-time riders. A 25-minute ride within Yizhuang normally costs 35 yuan ($4.8) on DiDi Chuxing, one of China’s largest ride-hailing apps. On Apollo Go, it costs just 11 yuan ($1.5).

Despite the unprofitable price tag, as well as the company’s relatively limited experience in car manufacturing, Baidu has managed to emerge as a leading player in China’s driverless sector with government endorsement and the development of its own artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Kunlun Xin. In fact, it’s often considered one of the top three companies in the world leading the way in driverless vehicles, the other two being Google-owned Waymo and Cruise, a largely autonomous subsidiary of General Motors.

To date, Apollo Go has established itself in 11 major Chinese cities. It has also received the country’s first permit to offer fully driverless service on open roads in Beijing, Chongqing, Wuhan in Hubei Province and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, respectively. As of October 17, more than 4 million Apollo Go rides had been completed since the service was launched in 2021.

Along with Waymo, Cruise and a few others, the company has achieved whatthe automotive industry calls Level 4 capabilities. The industry has divided its technological progress into six levels—from Level 0, wherehumans are in complete control of the vehicle, to Level 5, where nohuman intervention is required at all. At Level 4, or high automation,vehicles are fully capable of driving themselves as long as they stay within certain areas.

In addition to Baidu, several Chinese startups, including Pony.ai,SenseTime, Neolix and Haomo.AI, have also launched their driverless car models. Meanwhile, many homegrown new-energy vehicle(NEV) companies, such as XPENG and Li Auto, are opting for a different path.

“Many companies are investing in autonomous vehicle technology, but they are being more cautious,” Brady Wang, a technology analyst at Counterpoint Research,recently told the South China Morning Post newspaper.

These companies focus on developing Level 2 autopilot services as a premium software upgrade for their NEV models. While human drivers still need to monitor most tasks, autopilot mode allows the vehicle to briefly take control when activated.“While Level 4 cars require a complete upgrade of the traffic system, autopilot mode is more ready to make the leap from technology to a commercially viable product,”said Yu Qian, CEO of QCraft, a Chinese autonomous driving startup, on Taidu, a Chinese tech-focused podcast.

Although the industry is deeply divided over which strategy is better, these companies are all fixated on one goal: getting their own driverless projects off the ground as quickly as possible.

A rough ride

The industry always seems to be just one step away from reaching Level 5,the ultimate stage. For years, companies have been promising that self-driving vehicles will soon be roaming the urban landscape. But that future, it seems, is always just out of reach.

Current self-driving technology is fairly good at handling regular traffic—changing lanes, parking, slowing down when approaching crosswalks, etc. But with cars cutting lanes and jaywalkers and mopeds randomly barging into the street, these vehicles are bound to encounter situations beyond their programmed capabilities.

In addition, each Chinese city has its own unique layout. A system that works well in Beijing, where the streets are wide and straight, may not work well in Chongqing,a mountainous municipality with steep hills and narrow streets. “The real urban environment is much more complicated than imagined. The planning, policies and driving styles differ from city to city,” Cai Na, Vice President of Chinese autonomous driving startup Haomo.AI, told MIT Technology Review magazine.

For this reason, Chinese companies are customizing navigation systems based on the specifics of individual cities. This presents an exciting opportunity—and an equally formidable challenge. “The complex scenarios can generate more valuable data that can help us improve our technology,” Mo Luyi, Vice President of Pony.ai,told newspaper China Daily. However, this kind of complexity can also prevent the industry from penetrating a much broader market, as the cost of creating city-specific navigation systems is extremely high.

During the 2020 World Intelligent Connected Vehicles Conference in Beijing, China released a plan calling for 20 percent of all new vehicles to have Level 4 capabilities by 2030.

While many experts have expressed confidence in driverless technology, it remains to be seen how China will meet its 2030 goal.

A food delivery drone operated by Chinese delivery giant Meituan prepares to land ona pickup kiosk in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province in south China, on August 15 (XINHUA)

The buffer zone

Driverless cars are still a niche industry. But the technology has already found its way into many areas, including public transportation, delivery and smart vending.

In Yizhuang, robotaxis are not the only automated presence seen in the streets. Self-driving minibuses developed by QCraft regularly shuttle between several school campuses in the area.

Automated vending machines operated by Neolix travel between various intersections, offering passersby a tech-savvy selection of classic Chinese street foods.

Several express delivery companies, including SF Express and JD Logistics, have also launched their autonomous delivery vehicles to free couriers from the tedium of picking up packages from distant depots.

But the technology has also literally taken off. In Shenzhen, a major hub for driverless vehicles in the southern province of Guangdong, drones operated by Meituan, a Chinese delivery giant, regularly deliver food and groceries from mini-airports built on to pof shopping malls to pick-up kiosks near residential blocks.

BYD, a leading Chinese NEV manufacturer, has also launched a fully autonomous rail transit system called SkyShuttle in Shenzhen. The system, which runs on an elevated track that snakes through densely packed high-rise buildings, is designed to combat traffic congestion and enable a more vertically integrated transportation system.

By creating tiny, non-aggressive points of connection between technology, business and individual consumers, these unattended services are paving the way for the widespread use of driverless vehicles and are about to fundamentally change the entire fabric of modern transportation.Combined, these services and vehicles are fueling China’s race to a fully driverless future.

(Reporting from Beijing and Shenzhen)

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon

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