At the moment we have a rare event in the tech sector, right now in China there is developing a specialized tech sector that is zeroing in on what is called autonomous or self driving cars, while at the same time a very similar but completely separate market for exactly the same thing has been developing in the United States. Many people in this technological field actually believe China has better conditions for the uptake of the technology, and because of the much more aggressive support from the national and local governments in China the conditions are actually much more favorable for fast adoption of the driverless car. China also has one more advantage over the United States in that the Chinese never developed a passion for the open road and car ownership.
Pony.ai provides automobile engineering, technology solutions, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology for transportation and operates in the United States and China. Baidu Inc the main search engine in China also provides navigation services and Baidu serves clients globally. Aptiv (in photo) . Aptiv is a global technology company that develops safer, greener and more connected solutions enabling the future of mobility.
Of course in recent years car ownership in China has spiked dramatically, most economic experts agree that within 15 years China will be the largest automobile market in the world. Technological experts are actually putting their bets on to the automation of the Chinese taxi industry as a first step. As these cars would nearly all be electric vehicles, it would greatly aid the Chinese government in the lowering of the pollution levels in major cities of Beijing and Shanghai. There has been a massive torrent of startup companies in China going into this technological area.
Most of the start up companies are extremely unusual in that the executives, nearly 100%, have all come from being employed by major US tech giants, the best well-known is run by ex-Intel senior executive. This particular company, even though its backers are well guarded secret, is expecting to put its first demonstration model would show at the consumer electronic show in Las Vegas in 2017. This company has attracted what is commonly called a collection of super talent with one of their latest employees being the former head of Google in China. Both Tesla and Google, the two leaders in the US race to build a completely driverless car were asked their opinions of the Chinese companies that are also having their own race, both companies didn't really want to comment but Tesla says they expect their first self driving cars to be on the road in late 2018 and Google expects its first model to be on the roads by early 2019. Both of these dates are around about the same dates the Chinese are talking about.
When talking to some of the Chinese leaders they said something which caught everyone's attention, most of the people in the field only talk about China and the United States but the Chinese say they believe that BMW in Germany has also been working on an autonomous vehicle since 2013, so in their words the project should be well advanced by now.
The biggest hurdle both teams have is actually getting their cars on the road, in the United States both Tesla and Google have been fighting uphill battles to allow their cars to be tested on the open road, in China is the exact opposite, with the government the biggest driving force behind these cars as fast as one comes off the production line is on the road being tested.