Autonomous driving will be steadily developed and gradually realized by 2030

By Jeff Lee 2023-01-30

The R&D of autonomous driving technology has been at rock bottom worldwide in the past few years; except for the U.S. and China, all crucial auto countries such as Germany, Japan and Korea have been left behind in the race. The source of autonomous driving technology is big data, and it plays a significant part in how the two great powers, the U.S. and China, have managed to generate and maintain momentum for R&D. A wave of elimination will be inevitable in the next three years, but automakers that pull through and create a small-scale profit model will likely see a bumper crop in 2030!

The process of validating driving autonomy has been severely tested since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and started to sweep the globe three years ago, and the number of Level 4+ corner cases that need to be handled has far exceeded the imagination of R&D personnel. The repeated delays in the mass production schedule have forced many technology startups to back off. Even Apple, a company with copious resources, shelved its R&D project of self-driving technology after years of internal evaluation. With the full popularization of V2X features, however, the likelihood and timing of the implementation of self-driving technology does not seem far away. Research & Markets, a world-renowned research firm, predicts that the size of the global self-driving car market in terms of applied economics (the application is mostly seen in logistics and robotaxi ride-hailing service in urban areas today) will rapidly increase from 76 billion USD in 2020 to 2 trillion USD in 2030, equivalent to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% for 10 successive years. This represents the inelastic demand for mobility, an unstoppable trend around the world. Even though self-driving technology cannot be fully implemented overnight, some functions can be phased in specific scanraios to enable the conveniences of this technology early. Not surprisingly, the Chinese market will lead the way in driving the application of self-driving technology.

According to related programs announced by the Chinese government, China will achieve mass production of "conditional" autonomous vehicles and commercial operations of L4+ vehicles in selected areas in 2025. This means that public transportation vehicles equipped with self-driving systems and robotaxis will be performing daily travel tasks in China's major cities where traffic is heavy in three years. Baidu, a Chinese tech giant that almost rivals Waymo in self-driving technology, not only has Apollo, an open autonomous driving platform, but also unveiled its sixth-gen autonomous car, RT6, more than half a year ago. The company is legitimately the world's largest self-driving service provider, reaching Level 4 autonomy with exceptional computing power up to 1,200 TOPS and covering 10 major cities across China with robotaxi service. Judging from the road database of 40 million kilometers accumulated so far, Baidu is very likely to rise to the top self-driving technology provider in the world within a few years thanks to the rapid accumulation and analysis of colossal data as well as the evolution of AI learning. Bloomberg News predicts that by 2040, a fleet of 12 million robotaxis will be in operation in China, and the estimate for the U.S. is 7 million. Referring to today's self-driving technology, we might find these impressive projections somewhat exaggerated, but if we take a look at the recent development of the "blossoming" self-driving technology companies in China, we can get a rough idea about the pulse of growth in the coming years.

  • Baidu. As one of the global leaders in self-driving technology, Baidu is gaining influence. Not only does it dominate robotaxi business, but its Apollo Enterprise also provides customizable autonomous driving solutions for customers, including Korean automakers and many independent Chinese brands.
  • Alibaba and Tencent. These two tech giants are late entrants to the driving autonomy field, but the former is focusing on "cooperative vehicle-infrastructure systems" while the latter is working with more than a dozen Chinese brands on critical technology. The subsequent development of the two companies is not to be underrated.
  • Didi Chuxing. This mobility service provider, with 50 million registered car owners, built a self-driving R&D team in the U.S. as early as in 2017 to propel intelligent driving through international operations. Once the company has mature technology and directly takes on driverless self-driving, the huge database of car owners will serve as an amazing profit model.
  • Pony.ai. Pony.ai ranks among the top 10 in the world in the maturity of self-driving technology. What the company lacks now is a strong commercialization partner.
  • Horizon Robotics. This self-driving technology startup was favored by Volkswagen for a joint-venture partnership a few months ago. Volkswagen's software group CARIAD invested 2.4 billion euros, holding a 60% stake, in the new company. Just like that, the world's second largest auto group is betting autonomous driving on a Chinese startup that has not yet been 100% commercially validated. Horizon Robotics is one of the few pure R&D technology companies that design their own computing chips and platforms for autonomous driving. Horizon self-driving chip Journey™ 2 and computing platform Matrix are capable of detecting 8 different types of objects as targets on the road simultaneously with low power consumption. The company has infinite potential for technological independence and development.
  • NavInfo. NavInfo, which specializes in high precision mapping for self-driving systems, has been committed to the development of European mapping business since the acquisition of Mapscape in the Netherlands in 2011. Later in 2017, NavInfo formed a joint venture with German high precision mapping company HERE. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi are major shareholders of HERE, so the close cooperation with these European auto giants will continue to reinforce NavInfo's role in the driving autonomy industry. Although China imposes restrictions on the development of local high precision maps, it is clear that NavInfo focuses on Europe while continuing to expand business operations globally.

Autonomous driving is a domain where R&D does not come cheap, but upon commercialization, the technology can move from the current simple scenes to complex scenes, from specific sites to open sites, from low speed to high speed, and from carrying cargo to carrying passengers. AIoT technology, edge computing, multi-sensor data fusion algorithm, the computing power of AI chips, transportation infrastructure and networks, and the widespread application of LEO satellite technology will bring the time to realize full driving autonomy to us step by step. Despite the delays we have seen in the timetable, the R&D of self-driving technology will not halt. We will see blossoms and fruits for the first time in 2030.