China plots robotaxi invasion of Britain

Telegraph

4 hours ago

The Chinese robotaxis are coming.
After taking over the streets of Beijing, self-driving vehicles are now poised to pour on to Britain's roads as soon as next year.
Leading the charge is Baidu, a tech giant known as ' China's Google '.
In a direct challenge to Elon Musk's Tesla, which has already started testing its full self-driving technology in the UK, Baidu has vowed to roll out thousands of cars across Europe.
To do so, Baidu has partnered its Apollo Go taxi business with Lyft – one of Uber's main rivals – which plans to launch a self-driving taxi service in the UK in 2026.
The Beijing-based tech giant has set its sights on Britain after being effectively locked out of America, where Chinese driverless software is to be banned from 2027.
As a result, the expected flood of Chinese robotaxis risks putting Britain on a fresh collision course with the White House, although the potential for a geopolitical spat has far from halted interest from the Far East.
In China, robotaxis are no longer a high-tech novelty.
Companies including Baidu, WeRide, AutoX and Pony.AI all now offer self-driving shuttles that ferry passengers around without a driver.
Encouraged by their success at home, they are targeting expansion in Europe.
Pony.AI, which is valued at $5bn (£3.7bn), has said it will begin trialling its service in Luxembourg, while WeRide has tested driverless buses in France and Spain.
The start-ups, both of which are based in Guangzhou, have joined their Chinese peers in racing to tighten their grip on the global robotaxi market as adoption stutters across America.
After making initial headway in the self-driving market, momentum among Silicon Valley giants has since tailed off.
Uber notably abandoned its first effort to build an autonomous taxi in 2020 after a fatal crash, while Musk's long-standing promise to unleash an army of self-driving Teslas has so far been limited to Texas.
Cruise, one of the most established robotaxi ventures, was shut down last year by its parent company GM, after an accident involving a woman who was dragged under the car's wheels.
China's industry, on the other hand, appears to have moved up a gear.
'China's top players are pushing hard into overseas markets, potentially gaining a foothold before US rivals can fully scale', says Murtuza Ali, a technology analyst at Counterpoint Research.
While Waymo, the US market leader, is offering paid robotaxi rides in Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco and Los Angeles in California; and in Austin, Texas, China is already operating robotaxis across 30 Chinese cities.
Baidu's service is also live in 15 cities, while dozens more companies are launching pilot programmes.
Stan Boland, former chief executive of UK autonomous driving business Five AI, says: 'There is a propensity in China to take more risks in terms of automated driving.
'There has been a much higher level of caution here in Europe when it comes to regulatory approvals.'
In the UK, new rules brought in under Labour mean self-driving taxi and bus pilots could be live on UK roads from 2026.
The first is expected to be Uber's trial with Wayve, a UK AI business that has raised more than $1bn. US-based Lyft is also preparing to test driverless cars across the UK following its deal with Baidu.
Next up could be WeRide, which recently held talks with the UK's South China trade envoy, Trevor Lewis, about introducing autonomous vehicles in the UK.
A WeRide spokesman says: 'The UK is set to be an important part of WeRide's international growth. WeRide looks forward to potential collaborations that support the UK's smart mobility ecosystem.'
Concerns about expansion
However, the rapid expansion of China's self-driving car industry will no doubt raise scrutiny regarding its safety record.
Just last week, a vehicle operated by Baidu in the city of Chongqing fell into a roadside construction pit, flipping the vehicle on to its side. A woman escaped from the car unharmed.
Elsewhere, a car developed by tech giant Xiaomi was also involved in a crash in March that killed three people.
The vehicle smashed into a cement pole at 97mph while operating in a driver-assist mode, rather than driving entirely independently.
The crash prompted Chinese officials to crack down on marketing claims about self-driving capabilities from the country's carmakers.
As well as safety fears, the influx of Chinese robotaxis is also expected to trigger geopolitical scrutiny.
The US department of commerce warned in January that China's self-driving cars left 'opportunities for data exfiltration and unauthorised vehicle manipulation ', backing up its decision to ban the technology.
Similar concerns are now emerging in Britain.
China hawks fear the arrival of self-driving vehicles from the Far East will create risks akin to Huawei, the telecoms company barred from UK networks over national security concerns.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, warned China's vehicles 'will further enhance the control they have on the UK', adding they would be 'filled with internet of things' technology – sensors that can be used for surveillance.
Luke de Pulford, director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, adds: 'Unless the UK wakes up soon, it will find itself having to foot a huge bill for removing high-risk equipment, like they had to over Huawei.'
Yet despite such concerns, it appears that China's robotaxi experiment in Britain is only picking up pace.