Chinese Robotaxis Have Government Black Boxes, Approach U.S. Quality

A recent session at last week’s Ride AI conference in Los Angeles revealed some details about the different regulatory regime in China, and featured a report from a Chinese-American Youtuber who has taken on a mission to ride in the different vehicles.

Zion Maffeo, deputy general counsel for Pony.AI, provided some details on regulations in China. While Pony began with U.S. operations, its public operations are entirely in China, and it does only testing in the USA. Famously it was one of the few companies to get a California “no safety driver” test permit, but then lost it after a crash, and later regained it.

Chinese authorities at many levels keep a close watch over Chinese robotaxi companies. They must get approval for all levels of operation which control where they can test and operate, and how much supervision is needed. Operation begins with testing with a safety driver behind the wheel (as almost everywhere in the world,) with eventual graduation to having the safety driver in the passenger seat but with an emergency stop. Then they move to having a supervisor in the back seat before they can test with nobody in the vehicle, usually limited to an area with simpler streets.

The big jump can then come to allow testing with nobody in the vehicle, but with full time monitoring by a remote employee who can stop the vehicle. From there they can graduate to taking passengers, and then expanding the service to more complex areas. Later they can go further, and not have full time remote monitoring, though there do need to be remote employees able to monitor and assist part time. Pony has a permit allowing it to have 3 vehicles per remote operator, and has one for 15 vehicles in process, but they declined comment on just how many vehicles they actually have per operator. Baidu also did not respond to queries on this.

No U.S. regulation is that strict, though US companies have followed similar paths, though most have not bothered with having employees in the vehicle but not behind the wheel, as that’s more of a gimmick that something that improves safety. (Some companies which have vehicles with no steering wheel have had, or still have, operations with an employee on board who can stop the vehicle but is unable to grab a wheel.) U.S. permits in California have far fewer stages, with permits for testing, testing with no safety driver, and carrying passengers with or without a safety driver. Some states, like Arizona and Texas have almost no specific regulations.

While Waymo and Cruise never made any explicit statements, it is widely believed that when they did their first operations with no employee aboard, they used full time remote monitoring. This is a the prudent thing to do, and is the plan for companies like Aurora and Waabi which have both declared they will operate trucks with no safety driver aboard this year. It is unknown when Waymo stopped having full time remote monitoring, and in fact they have not officially declared it, though based on operational incidents, they obviously don’t, and nor did Cruise (or their dragging incident would be unlikely to have happened.)

In addition, Chinese jurisdictions require that the system in a car independently log any “interventions” by safety drivers in a sort of “black box” system. These reports are regularly given to regulators, though they are not made public. In California, companies must file an annual disengagement report, but they have considerable leeway on what they consider a disengagement so the numbers can’t be readily compared. Chinese companies have no discretion on what is reported, and they may notify authorities of a specific objection if they wish to declare that an intervention logged in their black box should not be counted.

There are strong arguments against such strict reporting. Safety drivers are told to intervene when they have any doubt, which means they will frequently intervene when not necessary. Because companies with mandatory reporting of all interventions want to keep their number down, they may, even unconsciously, discourage interventions. They also don’t want to have to count things like bathroom breaks which have no bearing on safety, leading to the wrong incentive. On the other hand, giving companies full leeway on what counts led to essentially useless reports in California. The right answer is hard.

This more strict regulation reportedly also has its own Chinese “flavour” and personal relationships are also important to get permits and deploy. Even so, it’s not slowing things down much, if at all.

User Experience

Sophia Tung is a YouTuber who is fluent in English and Mandarin and has traveled to China to try the Chinese robotaxis, and has also used them in the USA. Only a modest number of experienced users have had the chance to do this, so it’s good that Ms. Tung has made videos of her experiences. Her first Chinese trip involved a Baidu 5th generation car. Her overall impression was that vehicle, and the service around it were unacceptably poor. However, a return trip involved using Baidu’s newer 6th generation vehicle which she reports is much better; the best of all the Chinese players, and closer to Waymo in quality, though not quite at its level. Her first trip involved limited service, very long wait times, and poor ride quality, but the 6th generation vehicle, in Wuhan, did much better.

Oddly, she also rode 5th generation vehicles in Wuhan on her 2nd trip, and they were still of low quality in her view. They have fewer LIDARs and quite probably less compute resources. It’s possible they also haven’t received the newest software because of their old hardware. Baidu did not respond to queries for this story.

Tung also got a chance to ride with other players. She found a WeRide Robobus to nearly match the Baidu Apollo ride, though WeRide’s robotaxi wasn’t quite as good. It was at a similar level to the Pony.AI robotaxi in her estimation. The Waymo ride ranks ahead of all of these, and the Baidu Apollo 5th generation vehicle well below. While Cruise is gone, she rode it during its day and felt it was a little worse than the Pony and WeRide robotaxis, but better than the 5th generation Baidu.

She has not ridden with AutoX, which has been operating in the Pingshan area of Shenzhen. There has been only limited news recently about AutoX.

Of course, it’s important to remember that single experiences and videos tell us only a very limited amount about the quality of a robotaxi. If anything serious goes wrong, you can conclude the vehicle is still very immature. A mature vehicle will drive flawlessly when it comes to major issues like safety and getting stuck or blocking traffic. While all vehicles still make errors, in mature vehicles the errors should be so rare that the odds of an individual encountering one should be quite low. Only bulk statistics can help measure the quality of these vehicles, and none of the Chinese companies release them. (Waymo and Cruise do/did release them, though Tesla, May and Motional do not.)

It’s also worth noting that Tung waxed enthusiastically about other elements in the Baidu vehicle not related to the ride quality, such as built in massage chairs, and their use of battery swap (which is much more common in China than elsewhere.) This is impressive considering that Baidu reports their robotaxi only costs around $28,000 to make.

ForbesBaidu Launches New $28,000 Robotaxi In WuhanBy Brad Templeton

Her enthusiasm raises the question of how much “comfort features” of Robotaxis will matter when the market gets competitive. She said she would definitely prefer a vehicle with massage, though it’s less clear if that would be preferred with a longer wait time or higher cost. Zoox has bet big on designing its own custom vehicle in order to deliver the best experience they can compared to traditional car forms. Waymo also planned to use a more spacious vehicle from China’s Zeekr, but has apparently scaled back those plans after 100% tariffs were put on Chinese EVs by President Biden, and now have been made higher by President Trump.

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