Following today’s news that Toyota-backed Pony.ai was awarded a taxi license to operate 100 robotaxi vehicles in Guangzhou;

Sarah Coop, Analyst in the Thematic Research Team at GlobalData offers her view:

“In its Tech, Media & Telecom Predictions 2022 report, published in December 2021, GlobalData predicted that level 4 robotaxis will be available across the world’s urban areas by 2025. Pony.ai’s pilot project is the first step in this prediction becoming a reality. This move puts Pony.ai at the front of the robo-car tech race, ahead of the likes of Waymo and Tesla.

“It is no surprise that China is at the forefront of this tech, as emerging economies are developing as ‘smart cities’, and connected-vehicle technology is expected to start appearing in transportation networks on the whole in these cities. Most cities in countries such as China and Japan are brand new and don’t share the centuries-old bones of population centers in the West. As such, it is easier to set them up from the start with connected infrastructure, rather than having to go through costly retrofitting processes.

“Many of these novel urban areas are being built as ‘smart cities’, which incorporate connected tech across multiple levels of infrastructure to enable more efficient operation of transportation networks and traffic management. This makes Guangzhou, and China, a rich investment area for Pony.ai

“Pony.ai will initially deploy level 4 robotaxis, which include a safety driver. However, it will gradually remove these, creating commercial level 5 autonomous robotaxis. When this happens, all eyes will be on Pony.ai, to see if the deep-learning algorithms and heuristics can successfully and safely navigate hybrid human and machine driver environments, without the safety net of human intervention.”