The race begins to make the world's best self-driving cars

"On the US side, there's Waymo, Google's driverless venture. The company has invested billions of dollars in Waymo in the past 15 years. The company opened its robotaxi service to the public in June 2024 in San Francisco after years of testing and has been rolling it out steadily since. Now, vehicles are very visible in most of Los Angeles, and they are going to Washington DC, New York City, and London next year."

"On 2 November, the Chinese internet search giant Baidu issued a challenge to Google. Baidu announced that its autonomous vehicle subsidiary, Apollo Go, regularly conducts the same number of rides as Waymo: 250,000 each week. Waymo reached the milestone in the spring. The majority of Chinese electric vehicles, even without self-driving software, cost a fraction of those made by US companies. Building each Waymo vehicle costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, experts estimate, though the exact figure is not known."

"Building each Waymo vehicle costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, experts estimate, though the exact figure is not known. The CFO of Pony AI, a leader in autonomous vehicles in China, told the WSJ: Our vehicle's hardware cost is much, much lower than Waymo's. Google now needs to convince future customers that it is the higher-quality option to achieve a return on its billions of dollars of investment in Waymo."

Waymo and Baidu are staging a global competition to deploy robotaxis, with Waymo investing billions over 15 years and launching public service in June 2024 in San Francisco. Waymo vehicles are increasingly visible in Los Angeles and planned for Washington DC, New York City, and London. Baidu's Apollo Go claims comparable scale at about 250,000 rides per week. Chinese electric vehicles typically cost far less than US-made equivalents. Industry estimates place Waymo vehicle hardware costs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, while Pony AI reports much lower hardware costs for its vehicles. Differences in data transparency raise trust questions.

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