I initially started this article thinking Tesla would play a much bigger role (almost equal to Waymo), but when I dug into things there just seemed to be too much opacity/lack of updates surrounding anything related to Tesla's L4 deployment. Kind of a shame, as I do think they could potentially be a big player in 1-4 years, but in the short run I didn't think they warranted being on the podium with Apollo Go, WeRide, Pony, and Waymo.
They’re currently scaling their unsupervised fleet in Austin, and cybercab enters mass production in April. Will cost ~20k and doesn’t use lidar…will shake up the industry
@nickcorvino I lived in Wuhan in the summer and fall of 2024 and never saw any fully autonomous cars. I was in Guangdong and Yunnan in 25 and had the same experience.
As some other commenter suggested, Tesla doesn’t use Lidar tech. Time will tell…
China has so subsidized its industry that it does have a significant beat on the West. This may play out a few ways:
1) Tesla is successful with its robotaxi. If that is the case, traditional auto production is a shrinking industry going forward. Tesla should be able to blanket west with more/faster than anyone. The big 3 and Germans can fight over the residual share of the Petro/ownership stack. Toyota/Honda/Hyundai may transition.
2. The western automakers will have plenty of busted Chikese producers to pick over to augment their capabilities.
3. With the electric grid suddenly under pressure, it’s hard to see any real reason for western governments to mandate transition to EV’s.
Perhaps it pays off for China in the long run but when so much capital flows into an industry it ultimately ends up in a bust. See telecom in the US 1995-2002. At least in telecom you had equity investors writing the checks and taking the profits/losses. Now you have regional governments underwriting these companies; meanwhile I had an acquaintance that worked for a suburban government in China and was being paid in arrears🤷♂️ That seems like a bizarre trade off. And the historical context for China is that the subsidies just keep coming. So the damage to the population could be immense.
I was in Optical Valley, maybe a half mile from Joy City. Certainly major EV brands in every mall I ate. But that was 18 months ago, so perhaps a different era, lol.
It’s the same thing in SoCal. If you are about in the Downtown LA to Santa Monica corridor, Waymo is everywhere now, but go to the SFV or anywhere else and they don’t exist. Waiting for Tesla to make an appearance and see if it really works.
The general adoption of EV's in China is amazing. It seems like it's half the cars on the road, although I know that can't be right...yet. I think the official stat is around 15% The garbage trucks in our neighborhood are electric.
(When I was talking about "everywhere" previously, I meant the white autonomous taxis.)
I remember when there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not American regulators would ever let AVs get off the ground because they will all wring their hands too much for too long about "safety" (even though they are in fact safer), because the optics of a robot-to-human accident will be so bad.
At the time I said: It won't matter. China will just do it and eventually their success will make it undeniable for us.
For me it's encouraging that we are going less slowly than I actually thought we would but also that I was right: The authorities in China see the opportunity and they are just making it happen because they know this is leverage.
I don't love authoritarianism, but when it works it works and if the entire world were recalcitrant democracies good stuff like AVs might have never really moved.
This AV revolution is going to accelerate really hard soon. I'm pumped for it. Driving stinks.
The dome-shaped LIDAR is the original, omni-directional version where some electronic elements are mechanically rotated in order to achieve 360° coverage.
Chinese AVs, AFAIK, use instead solid state LIDARS. Those have a much smaller field of view — but they are smaller, faster, and much cheaper (less than $150 each in China, and falling), so Chinese companies can add 3 or 4 of these to their autonomous cars, which together cover the full 360° around the car, for a lot less than a single omni-directional LIDAR would cost. Heck, LIDARs are so cheap in China that they are already used in high-end robo-vacuums.
Also, if China's prototype EUV lithography machine is the real deal, then the US's chip advantage might only last a few years more; AFAIK there are actually more scientists and engineers working on improving chip manufacture in China than in the rest of the world added together, so as soon as China gains access to EUV — be it by developing its own, be it by buying elsewhere — it should quickly catch up, and likely even surpass the US and Taiwan.
The engineer and scientist advantage is also a big part of the reason China leads in areas such as EVs and batteries. CATL alone quite likely has more engineers on R&D than every battery company outside of China added together, and almost two thirds of all new battery-related research and patents in the world come from China. Meanwhile, BYD by itself already has more engineers working on R&D than the entire US automotive industry, including Tesla, added together.
Great write-up. I'm wondering if there have been any high-profile accidents in China. Here in the US, there is a lot of distrust as you mentioned, so anytime an AV does something out of the ordinary or breaks the rules it goes viral on social media. Recently, one hit a kid walking to school. Even though they were not injured, it brought a lot of attention. Anything like that it China?
The AV landscape may end up playing out exactly like the EV market.
The bottleneck for AV is geopolitical, not technological. AV policies will follow EV policies - places that allow Chinese EV sales will likely welcome Chinese AVs as well.
Titles with question marks can almost always be answered "no". In this case, it's yes. I live in Wuhan; Chinese AV's are simply better. Tesla will either go on record as being a spectacular flameout, or at best be the 2nd choice.
Although there are plenty of naysayers, there are plenty in the US public that are also demanding access to autonomous system systems and I think that makes the difference.
seems odd that such a well-researched article can be written with so little mention of Tesla
Fair point! I also wish there was more Tesla :(
I initially started this article thinking Tesla would play a much bigger role (almost equal to Waymo), but when I dug into things there just seemed to be too much opacity/lack of updates surrounding anything related to Tesla's L4 deployment. Kind of a shame, as I do think they could potentially be a big player in 1-4 years, but in the short run I didn't think they warranted being on the podium with Apollo Go, WeRide, Pony, and Waymo.
They’re currently scaling their unsupervised fleet in Austin, and cybercab enters mass production in April. Will cost ~20k and doesn’t use lidar…will shake up the industry
Mentioning Tesla with its optical only path would ruin the whole discussion about Lidar components 😅
Time will tell. I grew up in the Tule fog of central California. Let’s see if Tesla can work safely in all weather. But I concur the absence of Tesla.
Very interesting read, thxs. The
Germans not even mentioned?
Why? It's over, but no one told them.
Which German companies have anything remote to AV? None, as far as I know.
@nickcorvino I lived in Wuhan in the summer and fall of 2024 and never saw any fully autonomous cars. I was in Guangdong and Yunnan in 25 and had the same experience.
As some other commenter suggested, Tesla doesn’t use Lidar tech. Time will tell…
China has so subsidized its industry that it does have a significant beat on the West. This may play out a few ways:
1) Tesla is successful with its robotaxi. If that is the case, traditional auto production is a shrinking industry going forward. Tesla should be able to blanket west with more/faster than anyone. The big 3 and Germans can fight over the residual share of the Petro/ownership stack. Toyota/Honda/Hyundai may transition.
2. The western automakers will have plenty of busted Chikese producers to pick over to augment their capabilities.
3. With the electric grid suddenly under pressure, it’s hard to see any real reason for western governments to mandate transition to EV’s.
Perhaps it pays off for China in the long run but when so much capital flows into an industry it ultimately ends up in a bust. See telecom in the US 1995-2002. At least in telecom you had equity investors writing the checks and taking the profits/losses. Now you have regional governments underwriting these companies; meanwhile I had an acquaintance that worked for a suburban government in China and was being paid in arrears🤷♂️ That seems like a bizarre trade off. And the historical context for China is that the subsidies just keep coming. So the damage to the population could be immense.
It may be whatever district you were in in Wuhan. In Wuchang, they're everywhere.
I was in Optical Valley, maybe a half mile from Joy City. Certainly major EV brands in every mall I ate. But that was 18 months ago, so perhaps a different era, lol.
I live within Optical Valley, near Guanggu. 18 months ago, I don't recall any either. Now, I see several on any drive through Wuchang.
The "major EV brand in every mall"...yeah. Everywhere.
It’s the same thing in SoCal. If you are about in the Downtown LA to Santa Monica corridor, Waymo is everywhere now, but go to the SFV or anywhere else and they don’t exist. Waiting for Tesla to make an appearance and see if it really works.
The general adoption of EV's in China is amazing. It seems like it's half the cars on the road, although I know that can't be right...yet. I think the official stat is around 15% The garbage trucks in our neighborhood are electric.
(When I was talking about "everywhere" previously, I meant the white autonomous taxis.)
I remember when there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not American regulators would ever let AVs get off the ground because they will all wring their hands too much for too long about "safety" (even though they are in fact safer), because the optics of a robot-to-human accident will be so bad.
At the time I said: It won't matter. China will just do it and eventually their success will make it undeniable for us.
For me it's encouraging that we are going less slowly than I actually thought we would but also that I was right: The authorities in China see the opportunity and they are just making it happen because they know this is leverage.
I don't love authoritarianism, but when it works it works and if the entire world were recalcitrant democracies good stuff like AVs might have never really moved.
This AV revolution is going to accelerate really hard soon. I'm pumped for it. Driving stinks.
The dome-shaped LIDAR is the original, omni-directional version where some electronic elements are mechanically rotated in order to achieve 360° coverage.
Chinese AVs, AFAIK, use instead solid state LIDARS. Those have a much smaller field of view — but they are smaller, faster, and much cheaper (less than $150 each in China, and falling), so Chinese companies can add 3 or 4 of these to their autonomous cars, which together cover the full 360° around the car, for a lot less than a single omni-directional LIDAR would cost. Heck, LIDARs are so cheap in China that they are already used in high-end robo-vacuums.
Also, if China's prototype EUV lithography machine is the real deal, then the US's chip advantage might only last a few years more; AFAIK there are actually more scientists and engineers working on improving chip manufacture in China than in the rest of the world added together, so as soon as China gains access to EUV — be it by developing its own, be it by buying elsewhere — it should quickly catch up, and likely even surpass the US and Taiwan.
The engineer and scientist advantage is also a big part of the reason China leads in areas such as EVs and batteries. CATL alone quite likely has more engineers on R&D than every battery company outside of China added together, and almost two thirds of all new battery-related research and patents in the world come from China. Meanwhile, BYD by itself already has more engineers working on R&D than the entire US automotive industry, including Tesla, added together.
Great write-up. I'm wondering if there have been any high-profile accidents in China. Here in the US, there is a lot of distrust as you mentioned, so anytime an AV does something out of the ordinary or breaks the rules it goes viral on social media. Recently, one hit a kid walking to school. Even though they were not injured, it brought a lot of attention. Anything like that it China?
Example: https://www.collegetowns.org/p/waymo-hits-a-kid-walking-to-school
This just released and I have not listened.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-capacity/id1864408706?i=1000749380094
The AV landscape may end up playing out exactly like the EV market.
The bottleneck for AV is geopolitical, not technological. AV policies will follow EV policies - places that allow Chinese EV sales will likely welcome Chinese AVs as well.
Titles with question marks can almost always be answered "no". In this case, it's yes. I live in Wuhan; Chinese AV's are simply better. Tesla will either go on record as being a spectacular flameout, or at best be the 2nd choice.
Although there are plenty of naysayers, there are plenty in the US public that are also demanding access to autonomous system systems and I think that makes the difference.