** The international autonomous vehicle (AV) market may potentially be more competitive than the U.S. with several China-based players having announced expansion plans, J.P.Morgan says
** Alphabet's GOOGL.O Waymo has announced expansion into Tokyo while Chinese firms including WeRide and Pony.ai have announced plans to expand into the Middle East and Europe - JPM
** While Waymo has a headstart, U.S. AV market will see more players as Tesla TSLA.O, May Mobility, Amazon-owned AMZN.O Zoox and others are set to start commercial operations in the next 12-18 months - JPM
** Tesla on Sunday deployed a small group of self-driving taxis picking up paying passengers in Austin, Texas
** Tesla shares were up ~1% premarket
** "Uber has already struck ~18 AV partnerships, and we believe it is becoming an increasingly valuable partner to AV tech providers as both a demand utilization platform and a fleet operator" - JPM
** AV space will remain largely unprofitable until scale increases and vehicle costs "materially" decline, likely to under $100,000 - brokerage
(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru)
((Zaheer.Kachwala@thomsonreuters.com))
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