US sanctions against China are aimed at curbing the technological development of the latter country, but representatives of Chinese business believe that even in the difficult conditions of expanding restrictions, local developers manage to be somewhat ahead of their American rivals. This is the opinion of the developers of autopilot in transport and robots.
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Representatives of the South China Morning Post were able to draw a similar conclusion after communicating with the management of several Chinese companies at the China Conference event, which took place this week in Guangzhou. The headquarters of the startup Pony.ai, which develops self-driving car systems, is located here. The company’s vice president, Ann Shi Yu, said China’s advantage in this area is that it has more flexible and developer-friendly regulations that allow it to quickly create advanced autopilot systems. Chinese companies have the opportunity to quickly begin testing new technologies and, if necessary, make the necessary changes.
At the same time, the Chinese market is more competitive compared to the United States. As a representative of Pony.ai explains, if in the US only Waymo has a valid permit to operate hundreds of fully autonomous taxis on public roads, in China several companies are doing the same. By the end of last year, Pony.ai was operating about 250 robotic taxis and 190 automated trucks in China. Rival Baidu (Apollo Go) in Wuhan now operates more than 400 robotic taxis. Their activity has even become the cause of dissatisfaction expressed by local taxi drivers, who cannot cope with the competition and are losing their jobs.
The head of the brand of the robotics company UBTech, Michael Tam, admitted that American competitors like Tesla and OpenAI are ahead of Chinese companies in the development of software for robots, but the gap is not so large that Chinese developers have no chance of catching up. At least, the Chinese startup DeepSeek recently managed to prove that even with limited resources, it is possible to train a large language model that is not inferior to the developments of world leaders.
In addition, according to a UBTech representative, China is ahead of other countries in the world in terms of robot production capabilities. The founder of Suzhou Intelligence Technology, King Bing, emphasized that Chinese companies have already managed to achieve leadership in the market of so-called service robots that deliver food in restaurants or hotels, and also clean areas and premises.
Pony.ai and UBTech remain unprofitable companies. The former ended the first half of last year with a net loss of $51 million, but expects to increase its fleet of robocars to several thousand this year. This will allow us to break even at the operational level in terms of the cost of operating one vehicle. UBTech completed the same period with a net loss of $73.6 million, but is philosophical about the idea of moving to breakeven. According to the company, in the robotics segment from an investment point of view, one must have great patience, since breaking even can require 10 years of intensive work. But the patience of investors in this area may be rewarded very generously in the future, according to UBTech.