Autonomous driving + Refusal to vaccinate + Remembrance of Tiananmen

Dear reader,

In the hectic and politically tidy capital of China, nothing reminds us of the images and events of the night of June 4, 1989. 32 years ago today, the state authorities in Beijing took action against their own population with tanks and machine guns and bloodily shot down the protests of students and citizens.

Johnny Erling’s column recalls the massacre in the streets of Beijing and Tiananmen Square. The leaders of the CP have almost completely erased this period of Chinese history from social memory through censorship and repression. But a small number of brave people are still reminding Xi Jinping and the CCP of the violent suppression of the democracy movement in the 100th year of the Party’s existence.

Only a few days ago, Xi called on his comrades to create a “trustworthy, lovable, and respectable” image for China. In July, the CP will celebrate its birthday. It will be a pompous celebration, full of patriotism, commemorating the achievements of the country and the Party. A fireworks display of propaganda, including abroad. Especially at this time, trading partners, system rivals, and competitors must not tire of reminding the CP of its dark hours and exhorting the Party and its leaders to respect human rights in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Your
Nico Beckert

Catching up with autonomous driving: Germany lags far behind

By

Frank Sieren

Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) wants to promote autonomous driving in Germany. The way has now been cleared for him by the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, which last week approved a bill that will allow self-driving cars to operate in a regular mode without a physically present driver. A success for Scheuer, no doubt. However, the minister should be realistic about Germany’s position in international competition – election campaign or not. Scheuer claims that Germany is “the first country in the world to bring self-driving vehicles to the road.” But that’s not all. He even says:

“We are still one step ahead of technical developments.” With the new law, he would have ensured “that Germany is number one in this matter.” But in fact, the resolutions are part of an EU regulation that will mandate automated vehicle systems from 2022. The goal, Scheuer said, is to bring vehicles with autonomous driving functions into regular operation next year – limited locally to a defined operating area. “We are pioneers in the world,” said Scheuer, summing up the situation.

But even a quick glance at China shows that he is exaggerating in his description of developments in Germany. Since December 2020, for example, autonomously driving taxis from AutoX have been on the road in parts of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen without a safety driver and central control – i.e., in driving mode 4. In the northeastern suburb of Pingshan, they can now be freely booked by customers via app. 25 taxis are on the road there. They do not follow a fixed route but remain in the district of 600,000 residents, which covers around 168 square kilometers – a lot of hustle and bustle and high traffic volumes are inevitable.

AutoX is already planning commercialization

Alibaba-backed AutoX is now deploying more than 100 robotaxi in five Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Wuhan. The vehicles can be ordered via an app from Alibaba. According to the company, the Chrysler-Pacifica models, which are equipped with radar and camera sensors, will make decisions on their own. For example, about when a lane change is necessary. A 180-degree change of direction can also be carried out with the self-developed XCU control system.

AutoX plans to double its presence in China to more than ten cities in the coming year. The Shenzhen-based company was founded in 2016 by Jianxiong Xiao, a former assistant professor at Princeton University in the US. Last year, AutoX opened a 7,000-plus-square-meter data center in Shanghai, which it claims is the largest for self-driving cars in China and the largest robotaxi test center in all of Asia. AutoX also became the second company ever, after global leader Waymo, and the first Chinese company to receive a permit in the US state of California for driverless test operations at speeds of up to 75 km/h.

The Chinese are now represented in the US with a team of more than 100 research and development engineers. At AutoX, they are convinced that large-scale commercialization of self-driving cars, for example, as a fleet of robotaxis, is possible as early as 2023.

In Hamburg only with security driver

Germany is a long way from all that. VW has already started a fleet test for “autonomous driving” in Hamburg. The test track is located in Hamburg’s city center and will be nine kilometers long when completed. Five e-Golfs capable of Level 4 automation will be used. However, unlike in Shenzhen, a safety driver must sit behind the wheel, which suggests that the cars are not yet technologically ready.

Moreover, AutoX is just one of many companies in China already testing in regular operation. Since 2019, tests of self-driving cars on Chinese roads have more than doubled. That’s in line with Beijing’s plans. The Chinese state is promoting autonomous driving, for example, by equipping the public road network with the necessary infrastructure. The expansion of the 5G network is intended to accelerate the high-speed transmission of data between cars and transport systems. The long-term goal is to expand abroad: As with e-mobility, China also wants to set global standards in autonomous driving as a market leader from the outset.

Since March 2018, 27 Chinese cities and more than 70 companies have received permits to test autonomous cars on selected public roads in China, with Beijing and Shanghai alone having conducted over 2.5 million kilometers of test drives so far. That’s about ten percent more than in the US, where public road tests were allowed around the same time. In January of this year, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a draft policy allowing tests of robotaxis, autonomous shuttles, and even self-driving heavy trucks on highways under strict safety conditions – several months earlier than the German law was passed.

These players are ahead

Against who does Scheuer’s dream autonomous fleet have to prove itself? A look at the industry pioneers:

Baidu operates China’s largest semi-autonomous test fleet with nearly 500 vehicles (China.Table reported). And ten Level 4 vehicles in Beijing, albeit with security personnel. Baidu’s Apollo software is set to become a kind of Android for the car world. Currently, the company has partnerships with over 100 third-party developers, including BMW, Ford, and Volkswagen. Recently, Baidu reached the milestone of seven million test miles on public roads, carrying more than 210,000 passengers – that’s tops in the world, even Google’s Waymo can’t match it. By the end of 2023, the company aims to have 3,000 robotaxis in operation in 30 Chinese cities.

Pony.ai, a company founded in 2018 by two former Baidu executives, announced just before this year’s Shanghai Auto Show that it will massively expand its robotaxi service this year. So far, the company has completed more than 220,000 robotaxi rides and recently expanded its service to five cities in China and the US – Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Irvine, and Fremont. Last year, Japanese automaker Toyota invested $400 million in the startup. The companies plan to work together on Level 4 and 5 autonomous driving solutions. Pony.ai has a market valuation of over $3 billion.

Guangzhou-based Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi-linked provider WeRide announced in early February that it would test a fleet of driverless minibusses at the “Guangzhou International Bio Island,” a biotech industrial complex co-sponsored by the government. According to WeRide, the vehicles will operate there under “urban conditions” with autonomy level 4. Steering wheels are no longer installed at all, the company said. Founded in 2017, the startup was one of the first to implement a large-scale pilot program for 100 robotaxis in China.

Also at the forefront is the car-sharing provider Didi Chuxing. The publicly traded company emerged from a merger in 2015 and is currently valued at $56 billion. In 2019, the company spun off its autonomous driving business under the name DiDi Labs to pool more resources for business development and product innovation. By 2030, the Chinese equivalent of Uber plans to add one million self-driving robotaxis to its fleet. To achieve this, DiDi plans to work more closely with Volvo in the future, for example. Back in 2020, several Volvo XC60s were made available for a pilot program in Shanghai. Users of the DiDi app could book a ride in autonomous robotaxis with a safety driver.

In addition to the strong, multi-layered competition within the country, China has another advantage over Germany: It is faster and easier to collect large amounts of data there. The providers absolutely need this to make driving safer with the help of artificial intelligence. Networking with 5G is particularly important for information that cannot be captured by the car’s radar and camera system. While the network in Germany is still very patchy, the major cities in China now have full coverage.

Under these conditions, it is very unlikely that Germany will manage to catch up with the lead of Chinese companies, especially since German manufacturers prefer to concentrate on improving stage 3. Because from level 4 onwards, it is no longer the driver who is liable but the manufacturer.

Hong Kong vaccinates at snail’s pace

Those who get vaccinated in Hong Kong not only protect themselves against the Covid virus but can now become proud property owners. Several Hong Kong real estate companies have joined forces and are giving away a new apartment in the Kwun Tong district, the market value of which is estimated at around €1.1 million. Anyone who has already been vaccinated or will be vaccinated in the next few weeks can participate in the lottery.

Hong Kong’s largest bank, HSBC, one of the city’s most significant employers, also went on the offensive this week. Employees who can produce a vaccination certificate will receive two additional days of leave.

Incentives to boost vaccination campaigns exist in many countries. In Hong Kong, however, the battle is completely different – and, as is often the case in China’s Special Administrative Region, the political climate plays a key role.

Achieving herd immunity unlikely

Based on current figures, Hong Kong does not seem to have a realistic chance of achieving herd immunity in the foreseeable future. In probably no other developed region of the world is the willingness for vaccination as low as in the Asian financial center. While 43 percent of people in Germany have already received at least one vaccination dose as of Wednesday, the figure in Hong Kong is just 18 percent. Only 13 percent of people have been fully vaccinated.

Hong Kong started vaccinating almost at the same time as Germany. And unlike in Germany, there was even enough vaccine from the beginning. However, hundreds of vaccination appointments go unused every day, which is why the government is now donating the BioNTech vaccine to other countries, as it would otherwise expire. The vaccination campaign is perfectly organized, there is simply a lack of people willing to get vaccinated. In a survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong at the end of February, only 39 percent of respondents indicated a willingness to be vaccinated.

In Hong Kong, there is the usual percentage of people who are critical of vaccination because of medical concerns. Are the hastily developed preparations really safe? False claims about above-average death rates among vaccinated people also made the rounds in Hong Kong, much like in Germany. However, the political climate seems to be the most important factor that makes the difference. Refusal to get vaccinated has become a new form of protest against the government.

No vaccination in protest

“Why aren’t people in Hong Kong rushing to get vaccinated? People in the US and UK got vaccinated to get their pre-Covid lives back,” one supporter of the protest movement wrote on Twitter. “Hongkongers remember what life was like before the pandemic. There’s just no normalcy you want to return to quickly,” the user continued, “I could list what incentives would be needed to speed up vaccination. But those items would almost certainly violate the National Security Act.” Hong Kong, as local journalist Ryan Ho Kilpatrick judges, “was in crisis before the pandemic and will be after.”

For Hong Kong’s business community, the low vaccination rate is a dilemma. Businesses know: Until significantly more people are vaccinated, the city’s strict quarantine rules will not be lifted. While Hong Kong corporations are offering gifts in an attempt to boost vaccination levels, the government is making it clear that it has other tools at its disposal.

For example, in a new Covid wave, non-vaccinated citizens could be subject to strict restrictions. Visits to cinemas or restaurants, for example, would then be taboo, it was said at a government press conference on Monday. Whether such warnings will trigger a change of heart among enough Hong Kong citizens is doubtful.

At present, however, it looks anything but like a new wave of infection. Last month, Hong Kong reported only one local infection that could not be traced. The metropolis is largely free of Covid but still remains hostage to the virus. Gregor Koppenburg/Joern Petring

BMW: supply chain to become more climate-friendly

Automaker BMW wants to make its production in China more climate-friendly. The vehicle maker wants to reduce its carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2030 compared to 2019, together with Chinese suppliers across the entire supply chain, China chief Jochen Goller announced on Thursday. Accordingly, the operation of BMW plants in China is supposed to become carbon dioxide neutral by the end of the year, Reuters and others reported. In addition, carbon emissions in the company’s own production will be reduced by 80 percent by 2030, Goller said. High-ranking Chinese environmental representatives and cooperation partners such as battery manufacturer CATL reportedly attended the meeting.

By 2025, EVs will account for around a quarter of sales in China, according to the report. The vehicles are also expected to become more climate-friendly quickly: BMW had already announced that by 2030, vehicles should produce an average of one-third fewer emissions over their lifetime compared to a car produced in 2019. ari

Customs warns against harmful children’s products from the West

China has accused several Western clothing brands of selling goods harmful to children. A warning on the customs administration’s website lists 81 items imported by companies, including Nike, H&M and Zara. The list includes children’s clothing, shoes, toys, toothbrushes, and baby bottles that are said to have been discovered during investigations from June 2020 to May 2021. According to the customs administration, children’s cotton clothes from H&M, for example, are said to contain “dyes or harmful substances that can be absorbed by the body through the skin, mouth, etc. and endanger health.” The same problem was stated for children’s clothing from Zara, Nike T-shirts, and several batches of cotton pajamas from the US manufacturer GAP.

The announcement can be seen as Beijing’s latest blow against Western clothing brands that have been critical of the use of cotton from Xinjiang. Calls for boycotts had been raised against Swedish clothing manufacturer H&M and sports brand Nike in late March, some of which were further fueled by government accounts on social media. As a result, products from the manufacturers disappeared from online stores. The stores can no longer be specified as a destination for taxis ordered via apps. So far, there has been no reaction from the affected companies. ari

CATL moves closer to Tesla in Shanghai

CATL is planning a new EV battery factory in Shanghai, Reuters reported, citing two sources. The Shanghai site would put the world’s largest battery maker closer in location to Tesla’s Gigafactory 3. CATL has been supplying batteries to the US company since last year. CATL aims to become the California-based automaker’s largest battery supplier in the near future, the report added. The Chinese manufacturer plans to supply half of the battery cells Tesla needs worldwide in EVs and rooftop storage. According to the report, the factory will be able to produce battery cells with a capacity of 80 gigawatt-hours per year, which is enough for around 800,000 EVs. A precise timetable is not yet available. nib

Office corrects population figure upwards

China’s National Bureau of Statistics said the country’s population already passed the 1.4 billion mark in 2017 – two years earlier than previously thought. The agency reached this conclusion after recalculating the figures based on last year’s census, which is only held every ten years, Japan’s Nikkei news agency reported. An error was found “in the sampling for 2011 through 2019”, Nikkei quotes the Chinese authority.

The population figures for 2014 and 2015 were revised upwards by 8.6 million and between 2017 and 2019, even by ten million. Above all, the number of births had turned out to be higher than officially stated so far. Sample surveys are more prone to misestimation than full surveys. Therefore, it is common for corrections to be made after each census, the statistics office said, according to Nikkei.

China’s leadership under President Xi Jinping is increasingly concerned about the country’s declining birth rate and aging population. Census data released in May showed that China’s population is already set to fall much faster (as reported by China.Table). Previously, the leadership assumed this would not be the case until the late 2020s. The latest revision of the figures is unlikely to change this.

Pressure is mounting to adjust to slower economic growth and do more for the old. The higher average age could put the brakes on the leaders’ efforts to make China a technology-leading and consumption-driven economy. flee

Beijing urges provinces to meet climate targets

On Thursday, China’s authorities urged provincial and regional governments to meet their climate targets on energy consumption and efficiency for 2021. In the first quarter, only 10 out of 30 regions and provinces met their targets to cut energy consumption or energy intensity – the amount of energy used per unit of economic growth – Reuters reported from a statement by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). According to the statement, the worst performers were Zhejiang, Yunnan and Guandong provinces and the Guangxi region.

The NDRC urged the provinces to “ensure the achievement of annual targets, especially energy intensity targets.” Beijing had only recently announced its intention to reduce the energy intensity of its growth by three percent in 2021. China failed to meet its climate target of reducing energy intensity by 15 percent between 2016 and 2020.

In its 14th Five-Year Plan, the People’s Republic set itself the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 18 percent in relation to economic growth. With China-typical economic growth, emissions would nevertheless rise. For example, with average economic growth of a moderate five percent per year until 2025, carbon emissions are expected to rise from 14.4 gigatons at the end of 2020 to almost 15.1 gigatons at the end of 2025 – and yet the 18 percent reduction target would still be met in relation to GDP. nib

Met with an accident before dawn

By Johnny Erling

A macabre funeral party made its way to Beijing’s West Mountains. State security officials escorted the small group of relatives who went to Wan’an Cemetery on June 4 last year. They commemorated their children and decorated their graves with flowers. The police did not let them out of their sight.

Duan Changlong’s mother came in a wheelchair. His memorial stone reads, “He was a student of chemistry at Tsinghua University in 1984. He was born on Oct. 19, 1965, and died on June 4, 1989.” Instead of the word “die,” the parents chose the written term “Yu Nan” (遇难) for “met with an accident.” Before that, they wrote “Ling Cheng” (凌晨 – at dawn) as the time of his death: “Met with an accident before dawn.”

Gedenkstein vom Studenten Duan Changlong. Eines der acht Gräber für die Opfer des Tiananmen-Massakers. — “Met with an accident before dawn” is inscribed on the memorial stone for student Duan Changlong, who died on June 4, 1989. One of eight graves for the victims of the Tiananmen Massacre, whose urns lie buried in Beijing’s Wan’an Cemetery.

Duan was hit by bullets shortly after midnight as army units shot their way through the middle of the capital, aiming to clear Tiananmen Square, which was occupied by demonstrating students. Unlike many hundreds of other victims that night, Duan was given a grave. His distinguished family was allowed to bury the urn and place a memorial stone for him, as were the relatives of seven other victims. Every year on June 4, their relatives, who have joined the self-organized survivors’ initiative of the “Tiananmen Mothers,” visit the eight graves.

I discovered it by chance in the 1990s. Wan’an is less than an hour’s drive west on the edge of the Xiangshan Mountains. It is one of the oldest and most extensive cemeteries in Beijing, where there is also a tomb for a hero of the revolution, Li Dazhao, the co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party who died in 1927. School classes make a pilgrimage there without even suspecting who else lies in the cemetery.

What happened to the martyrs of the democracy movement could only be cautiously hinted at by their parents. On the memorial stone to Yuan Li, they wrote as an obituary: “He was not 30 years old when he was suddenly snatched from this world/Our star of hope is extinguished/The Lord of Heaven is unjust/He robbed a strong boy, but let us old ones live/Born and died in unhappy times/Our hearts burst, all cheerfulness fled.” In 1960, her son was born, in the “unfortunate times” of the famine following Mao’s Great Leap Forward campaign.

Hao Zhijing’s parents also wrote under his date of death, June 3, the exact time of his death: “Wu Ye”(午夜) – China’s word for midnight. They dedicate the lines to him, “For 30 years we raised you. Just when you were about to use your strength for the four modernizations of our country, you died. Why does lightning strike in broad daylight?”

How many people died on the night of June 4 is considered a state secret by Beijing. Initially, the regime provided information: on June 6, 1989, state spokesman Yuan Mu said 5,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians were injured and about 300 people were killed, including 23 students. In late June, Beijing’s chief mayor corrected: Ten soldiers and 200 civilian casualties died. Among them, he said, were 36 students. After that, the authorities remained silent.

All the dead were quickly cremated. Parents who could identify their children were allowed to take the urn home. Former Professor Ding Zilin, whose 17-year-old son Jiang Jielan was shot, keeps it on a small altar in her apartment. Ding founded a gathering movement for relatives in 1990, calling them the “Tiananmen Mothers.” More and more bereaved families contacted her. In 1995, despite all the persecution and harassment from the authorities, they began writing annual letters to the government. They demanded an “independent and just” investigation of the events, clarification of every death, compensation, and legal prosecution of those responsible.

This week the “Tiananmen Mothers” published another open letter: “32 years have passed. We see no willingness on the part of the official authorities to clarify the bloody incident. The June 1989 massacre remains a taboo.” Again they ask: “How many people were killed, how many injured?” Because all information about it is blocked, they say, “many young people today don’t know about the massacre or don’t believe it happened.”

The mothers are appealing to Party leader Xi Jinping, who is busy preparing pompous celebrations for the Party’s 100th birthday on July 1, to live up to his words that the Party must serve the good of the people. “Since the late 1990s, we have called on the government to sit down with us for a peaceful dialogue on all issues related to the ‘June Fourth’ tragedy to find solutions according to the law.” 122 bereaved families signed the letter. Below is a note that 62 of the original members have since died.

On their website, the “Tiananmen Mothers” have created a virtual cemetery. There they document the names of 202 victims of June 4, whose deaths have been confirmed by at least two witnesses. The eight names of the graves from Wan’an Cemetery are also among them.

Wide green spaces around the concrete jungle – the residents of the Mount Nicholson luxury residential project in Hong Kong (photo) don’t have to move around in the city’s stuffy high-rise canyons. However, it becomes problematic with another matter: because parking spaces are in demand in the small neighborhood – but in such high demand? According to media reports, one parking space there was recently sold for the equivalent of $1.3 million, thus securing the title of “most expensive parking bay in the world.” Another parking space also fetched almost $1 million.

CHINA.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Amelie
Richter

Marcel
Grzanna

Fabian
Peltsch

Julia
Fiedler

Angela
Köckritz

Jörn
Petring

Dear reader,

In the hectic and politically tidy capital of China, nothing reminds us of the images and events of the night of June 4, 1989. 32 years ago today, the state authorities in Beijing took action against their own population with tanks and machine guns and bloodily shot down the protests of students and citizens.

Johnny Erling’s column recalls the massacre in the streets of Beijing and Tiananmen Square. The leaders of the CP have almost completely erased this period of Chinese history from social memory through censorship and repression. But a small number of brave people are still reminding Xi Jinping and the CCP of the violent suppression of the democracy movement in the 100th year of the Party’s existence.

Only a few days ago, Xi called on his comrades to create a “trustworthy, lovable, and respectable” image for China. In July, the CP will celebrate its birthday. It will be a pompous celebration, full of patriotism, commemorating the achievements of the country and the Party. A fireworks display of propaganda, including abroad. Especially at this time, trading partners, system rivals, and competitors must not tire of reminding the CP of its dark hours and exhorting the Party and its leaders to respect human rights in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong and elsewhere.

Your
Nico Beckert

Catching up with autonomous driving: Germany lags far behind

By

Frank Sieren

Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) wants to promote autonomous driving in Germany. The way has now been cleared for him by the Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, which last week approved a bill that will allow self-driving cars to operate in a regular mode without a physically present driver. A success for Scheuer, no doubt. However, the minister should be realistic about Germany’s position in international competition – election campaign or not. Scheuer claims that Germany is “the first country in the world to bring self-driving vehicles to the road.” But that’s not all. He even says:

“We are still one step ahead of technical developments.” With the new law, he would have ensured “that Germany is number one in this matter.” But in fact, the resolutions are part of an EU regulation that will mandate automated vehicle systems from 2022. The goal, Scheuer said, is to bring vehicles with autonomous driving functions into regular operation next year – limited locally to a defined operating area. “We are pioneers in the world,” said Scheuer, summing up the situation.

But even a quick glance at China shows that he is exaggerating in his description of developments in Germany. Since December 2020, for example, autonomously driving taxis from AutoX have been on the road in parts of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen without a safety driver and central control – i.e., in driving mode 4. In the northeastern suburb of Pingshan, they can now be freely booked by customers via app. 25 taxis are on the road there. They do not follow a fixed route but remain in the district of 600,000 residents, which covers around 168 square kilometers – a lot of hustle and bustle and high traffic volumes are inevitable.

AutoX is already planning commercialization

Alibaba-backed AutoX is now deploying more than 100 robotaxi in five Chinese cities, including Shanghai and Wuhan. The vehicles can be ordered via an app from Alibaba. According to the company, the Chrysler-Pacifica models, which are equipped with radar and camera sensors, will make decisions on their own. For example, about when a lane change is necessary. A 180-degree change of direction can also be carried out with the self-developed XCU control system.

AutoX plans to double its presence in China to more than ten cities in the coming year. The Shenzhen-based company was founded in 2016 by Jianxiong Xiao, a former assistant professor at Princeton University in the US. Last year, AutoX opened a 7,000-plus-square-meter data center in Shanghai, which it claims is the largest for self-driving cars in China and the largest robotaxi test center in all of Asia. AutoX also became the second company ever, after global leader Waymo, and the first Chinese company to receive a permit in the US state of California for driverless test operations at speeds of up to 75 km/h.

The Chinese are now represented in the US with a team of more than 100 research and development engineers. At AutoX, they are convinced that large-scale commercialization of self-driving cars, for example, as a fleet of robotaxis, is possible as early as 2023.

In Hamburg only with security driver

Germany is a long way from all that. VW has already started a fleet test for “autonomous driving” in Hamburg. The test track is located in Hamburg’s city center and will be nine kilometers long when completed. Five e-Golfs capable of Level 4 automation will be used. However, unlike in Shenzhen, a safety driver must sit behind the wheel, which suggests that the cars are not yet technologically ready.

Moreover, AutoX is just one of many companies in China already testing in regular operation. Since 2019, tests of self-driving cars on Chinese roads have more than doubled. That’s in line with Beijing’s plans. The Chinese state is promoting autonomous driving, for example, by equipping the public road network with the necessary infrastructure. The expansion of the 5G network is intended to accelerate the high-speed transmission of data between cars and transport systems. The long-term goal is to expand abroad: As with e-mobility, China also wants to set global standards in autonomous driving as a market leader from the outset.

Since March 2018, 27 Chinese cities and more than 70 companies have received permits to test autonomous cars on selected public roads in China, with Beijing and Shanghai alone having conducted over 2.5 million kilometers of test drives so far. That’s about ten percent more than in the US, where public road tests were allowed around the same time. In January of this year, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published a draft policy allowing tests of robotaxis, autonomous shuttles, and even self-driving heavy trucks on highways under strict safety conditions – several months earlier than the German law was passed.

These players are ahead

Against who does Scheuer’s dream autonomous fleet have to prove itself? A look at the industry pioneers:

Baidu operates China’s largest semi-autonomous test fleet with nearly 500 vehicles (China.Table reported). And ten Level 4 vehicles in Beijing, albeit with security personnel. Baidu’s Apollo software is set to become a kind of Android for the car world. Currently, the company has partnerships with over 100 third-party developers, including BMW, Ford, and Volkswagen. Recently, Baidu reached the milestone of seven million test miles on public roads, carrying more than 210,000 passengers – that’s tops in the world, even Google’s Waymo can’t match it. By the end of 2023, the company aims to have 3,000 robotaxis in operation in 30 Chinese cities.

Pony.ai, a company founded in 2018 by two former Baidu executives, announced just before this year’s Shanghai Auto Show that it will massively expand its robotaxi service this year. So far, the company has completed more than 220,000 robotaxi rides and recently expanded its service to five cities in China and the US – Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Irvine, and Fremont. Last year, Japanese automaker Toyota invested $400 million in the startup. The companies plan to work together on Level 4 and 5 autonomous driving solutions. Pony.ai has a market valuation of over $3 billion.

Guangzhou-based Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi-linked provider WeRide announced in early February that it would test a fleet of driverless minibusses at the “Guangzhou International Bio Island,” a biotech industrial complex co-sponsored by the government. According to WeRide, the vehicles will operate there under “urban conditions” with autonomy level 4. Steering wheels are no longer installed at all, the company said. Founded in 2017, the startup was one of the first to implement a large-scale pilot program for 100 robotaxis in China.

Also at the forefront is the car-sharing provider Didi Chuxing. The publicly traded company emerged from a merger in 2015 and is currently valued at $56 billion. In 2019, the company spun off its autonomous driving business under the name DiDi Labs to pool more resources for business development and product innovation. By 2030, the Chinese equivalent of Uber plans to add one million self-driving robotaxis to its fleet. To achieve this, DiDi plans to work more closely with Volvo in the future, for example. Back in 2020, several Volvo XC60s were made available for a pilot program in Shanghai. Users of the DiDi app could book a ride in autonomous robotaxis with a safety driver.