Mainland China’s mobility service market to drive demand for autonomous driving technology

Mainland Chinese companies have made rapid progress in developing Level 4 technology in the past three to four years and are looking to deploy robo-taxi service in several megacities

Since the first autonomous car competition organized by the US Department of Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) in 2004, the United States has been at the center stage of autonomous driving. Alphabet’s Google Self-Driving Car Project, which later became an independent company called Waymo, was the first project to put autonomous vehicles on public roads for testing―while many OEMs and suppliers worked in closed courses. Later, Waymo reached several other milestones, including becoming the first company to launch a commercial ride hailing service based on the SAE Level 4 autonomous driving in Phoenix, Arizona, the US, in late 2018.