The Chinese startup company WeRide has announced a launch, slated for this coming July, of its first commercial autonomous taxis in Guangzhou. A driver will be still present during the experimentation to deal with particular driving situations such as a severe weather conditions, but booking and payment will be made by users via the smartphone app. WeRide has therefore focused on level 4 autonomous vehicles, planning to boot out the driver progressively in 2020, progressively to secure consumer acceptance.
Since 2018, WeRide has done multiple road tests in an effort to catch up with Waymo and Uber and others by collecting road driving data generated by 500 taxis already in operation; WeRide President Lu Qing said, “In China you can afford to get data quickly, because due to government support vehicles can drive practically anywhere. Costs are also lower. To hire a driver in Guangzhou is less than a tenth of the cost in San Francisco”.
Meanwhile, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance Venture Capital Fund and Hong Kong-based AI company SenseTime have invested in WeRide. They use SenseTime surveillance system combined with Nvidia graphics processing units. Using its very favorable legal and economic environment, China is leading autonomous car introductions, with many heavyweights like Baidu (in agreement with Volvo), Tencent and Pony.ai , among others, heavily investing in the segment.
