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- [Announcer] Every morning since April,
more than a hundred self-driving taxis
leave this operation center
and take to the streets of Shanghai.
- If you want to call for our AutoX car,
you would just go onto the app.
- [Announcer] The autonomous fleet's goal?
Navigate the chaotic traffic of the tiny city
and sweep up data on how other vehicles and people move.
Each bit of information is then fed back
to the servers of Chinese startup, AutoX,
perfecting algorithms that its CEO, Jianxiong Xiao,
says will soon make China a nation of self-driving cars.
- If the pandemic in countries like U.S. continue,
then the traffic is not coming back.
The pandemic give us a head-start advantage
compared to players outside China.
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- [Announcer] When lockdowns across the U.S.
forced American companies like Alphabet's Waymo,
Ford's Argo and Uber,
to suspend the vast majority
of its on-the-road testing in March,
AutoX was getting back on the road
because China was emerging from lockdown.
- Here in the United States,
most of the companies have had to stop
all of their on-road testing,
having to rely almost entirely on simulation work.
Having a few months of additional time to do that testing
will probably benefit the Chinese companies.
- [Announcer] Auto analysts say American companies
are still the industry's leaders.
But Chinese startups are using the time
that the pandemic has bought them to get ahead.
According to Boston Consulting Group,
since 2019, Chinese companies,
including Baidu, DiDi, and AutoX,
more than doubled their fleets of self-driving vehicles
on Chinese roads to 260.
The urgency to limit
face-to-face interactions during the pandemic
has also helped companies raise $1.4 billion
so far this year.
- If we can make the car fully automatic,
you don't need a driver.
It's actually much safer considering COVID-19.
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- [Announcer] This is the Shenzhen headquarters of AutoX
and during the past few months,
the team has been working on a new radar system
that can see a traffic light
or another car that's 1,600 feet away.
- There's a camera-cleaning system,
so that our car can drive under heavy raining situation.
- [Announcer] Xiao, says he expects the technology
to be first widely adopted in China,
since not many people have driver's licenses.
- In the U.S. culture-wise,
everyone know how to drive,
but not many people in China can afford to have a car.
And that's why shared mobility is a must-have.
There's no other choice.
- [Announcer] AutoX is unveiling a revolutionary way.
- [Announcer] AutoX also has two R and D centers
in Silicon Valley and San Diego
to test and feed information back to China.
Xiao says the pandemic accelerated his company's plans.
In April, it opened what he says
is China's largest self-driving
taxi operation center in Shanghai.
From the start,
the Chinese government has played a critical role.
In late February,
Beijing said a third of all cars produced in China
should be self-driving by 2025.
- That's really where the biggest advantage is going to be.
- [Announcer] Sam Abuelsamid is a car analyst,
who's been researching the development
of self-driving cars in China and the U.S.
for more than 13 years.
- On deploying that the largest adoption
of automated driving technology in the next decade
will be in China.
The addressable market in China
is much larger than anywhere else.
And the government policies in China
definitely have the potential to increase that adoption.
- [Announcer] In Shanghai, the local government
has created a special 30-mile zone
where companies can test the latest features
of their self-driving cars.
- This looks like a normal bus stop
but this is one of the places
where people can call for our AutoX self-driving car.
- [Announcer] The most important technology
that the local government installed
are the 5G sensors along the roads
that help to quickly stream loads of data to the taxis.
- The white boxes, basically they have the transmitters.
There are some cameras that are installed
on the side of the road.
So what they do, they would detect the objects.
- [Announcer] This infrastructure
is called vehicle-to-everything or V2X.
Auto analysts say,
the U.S. has rolled out nearly 100 V2X projects,
far less than Beijing's requirement
to cover 90% of highways in China with the technology
by the end of the year.
- If there's a truck in front of the automated vehicle,
that sensor's not gonna be able to see
what's on the other side of that truck
or what's around the corner.
But adding V2X allows the vehicle
to extend its situational awareness beyond line of sight.
And that's something that I think
the U.S. is definitely further behind.
- [Announcer] To catch up,
analysts say American self-driving car makers themselves
would have to spend billions of dollars for V2X fitted roads
or create vehicles that are equipped
with sophisticated technology
that wouldn't need to rely on 5G roads at all.
While Waymo and Ford's Argo said
they restarted some of their road operations in May,
analysts say the bulk of U.S. testing will be limited
until the pandemic is brought under control.
Auto analysts say,
the country to first mass-produce self-driving vehicles
will be the one to shape the future
of not just shared transportation
but other key industries that have seen a boost
during the pandemic.
- Goods delivery is likely to be a better opportunity
in the near term for automated vehicles.
The trend towards more e-commerce
is going to continue and accelerate
and people are going to be relying more on deliveries.
- [Announcer] And AutoX CEO, Xiao,
wants to make sure his cars are ready
when that transition happens.
- The Chinese market is very huge.
You can do in one city in China,
you can use the same technology,
the same business model,
you can copy in the following 200 city in China.
Another country may have only three major cities.
Then the maximum you can do is multiply by three.
There's not much financial return.
But in China, we can make tons of money.
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