By Peter Landers

BEIJING -- I got a glimpse of a technology that soon could be spreading around the world -- if not the U.S.

It is a Chinese robotaxi. One of the two I tried featured executive-style chairs and ample luggage space where the front passenger would usually sit. With no human behind the wheel, it sailed smoothly through the streets of Beijing, dodging the occasional double parker or illegal turner. Soon, I almost forgot a computer program was doing the driving.

The technology and rider experience are generally similar to the U.S. driverless taxis operated by Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet. As Waymo and Elon Musk's Tesla robotaxi dominate Americans' attention, Chinese companies are building businesses in their home market while also putting stakes down in Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

All those companies hope to dominate a global market that UBS analysts say could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars someday if self-driving tech keeps advancing.

In China, three Nasdaq-listed Chinese companies -- Baidu, Pony AI and WeRide -- each have hundreds of robotaxis on the road operating commercial paid services without a human safety driver.

"Our vehicle's hardware cost is much, much lower than Waymo's. That will be a very good advantage for these Chinese companies," said Leo Wang, Pony AI's chief financial officer.

HSBC analysts project that China's robotaxi fleet will grow to tens of thousands of vehicles by the end of next year. That is up from a few thousand today, with the three companies testing autonomous vehicles in around a half-dozen countries outside of China.

By contrast, Waymo is operating test vehicles in only one country outside the U.S. -- Japan -- with plans to launch in London. Tesla's robotaxis operate in Austin, Texas, and still have human safety drivers.

A Waymo spokesman said the company is "the world leader in autonomous driving technology" and pointed to its extensive public disclosure about safety performance. The company is "continuously driving our costs down as we scale," he said.

On my two rides, one with WeRide and the other with Pony AI, I found the vehicles navigated with humanlike judgments about risk. In one case, the WeRide vehicle was driving in the left lane of a two-lane street, when a human driver double-parked in the right lane and got out of his car. The WeRide software tapped the brakes, but didn't freeze: Once the person moved toward the curb, it accelerated past the doubled-parked car.

The biggest of the Chinese operators is Baidu, a Chinese internet company known for its search engine. Baidu operates more than 1,000 driverless vehicles, mostly in China. It said it has completed more than 14 million rides as of August. Waymo said in May that its total surpassed 10 million, and it has said it is operating at least a quarter-million fully autonomous rides each week.

In July, Baidu reached a deal with Uber Technologies to deploy thousands more vehicles in Asia and the Middle East that riders will access through their Uber app. The following month, Baidu agreed with Lyft to deploy thousands of vehicles in Europe, starting with Germany and the U.K. next year, and it is looking to expand into Southeast Asia in coming months.

Americans aren't likely to see any of the Chinese vehicles on their streets. The U.S. effectively blocks the import of Chinese electric vehicles through high tariffs, and both the Biden and Trump administrations have expressed concern about Chinese vehicles scooping up data about Americans' whereabouts.

Industry executives say the global battle is still in its early stages, and the operations outside the U.S. and China are generally small tests. Waymo's financial muscle and experience with a range of U.S. markets would give it an edge if it chooses to accelerate its global expansion, and the Chinese forays into Europe must contend with competition from Volkswagen.

For their part, robotaxi operators in China can tap efficient local EV factories for lower-cost vehicles, giving them the leeway to build in luxury features such as a massage chair, as in the latest Apollo Go model, or the big seat with armrests that I enjoyed in the WeRide vehicle.

"It's not just about the tech, it's about the passenger experience," said WeRide's marketing chief, Maeve Zhang. "You can interact with the vehicle to say, maybe, 'Play me some Taylor Swift.'"

Another China-based global competitor is Momenta, which has drawn investment from Mercedes-Benz, General Motors and Toyota. It doesn't make its own cars but supplies its driver-assistance software to hundreds of thousands of human-driven vehicles and collects anonymized video and data for AI to digest. It is analogous to the countless texts that power the large-language models used by chatbots.

Uber plans to use Momenta's technology in robotaxi services in Europe, starting with Munich next year.

Robotaxi companies are augmenting the real-world videos with training in simulated scenarios that help robotaxis deal with once-in-a-blue-moon cases, said Wang, the Pony AI executive. "As long as you can come up with good synthetic data and you can mimic the reality, then it becomes a very powerful tool," he said.

The business model for robotaxis is still unproven, as General Motors demonstrated last December when it scrapped its Cruise robotaxi program after $10 billion in development costs.

For Pony AI and WeRide, revenue from robotaxis, while growing, is still in the single-digit millions of dollars per quarter, and they are bleeding cash. Both companies listed their shares in Hong Kong on Thursday, adding to existing Nasdaq listings, and the shares skidded in their Hong Kong debut in a reflection of investor doubts about profitability.

Safety remains a concern. The Chinese robotaxi companies have generally avoided injury-causing accidents but have had other incidents, including a Pony AI car catching fire in May. No one was hurt.

Musk, speaking on a Tesla earnings call in October about robotaxis, said "people just don't quite appreciate the degree to which this will take off." But, echoing other industry executives, he said Tesla would be "paranoid about deployment because, obviously, even one accident will be front-page headline news worldwide."

Write to Peter Landers at Peter.Landers@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 07, 2025 23:00 ET (04:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.