Is Auto X paving the way for the future?

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A world filled with fully autonomous cars has been in the works for several years. But in China, one company has just got even closer to making it a reality. AutoX is a Hong-kong based company that focuses mainly on building hardware and software integrated technology for autonomous vehicles or in other words “a self-driving car technology”. The company has conducted test drives in different cities all over the world to train the AI driver to adapt to different road conditions, weather patterns and driving styles. It has also been claimed that the AI driver can drive many different types of vehicles such as SUVs, sedans, trucks and electric vehicles.

The city of Shenzhen is aiming to become the city of the future, the residents have already seen the city convert it’s entire bus fleet to electricity. And now with the help of AutoX, the residents will get to see driverless cars which will be known as “RoboTaxis” on the streets. All made possible by a four-year-old startup backed up by Alibaba, MediaTek and Shanghai Motors, which is deploying a fleet of 25 unmanned vehicles in downtown Shenzhen, marking the first time any autonomous driving car in China tests on public roads without safety drivers or remote operators. AutoX is currently the only China-focused company, to hold a permit for driverless robotaxis in California, which is also known as the “highest standard permit in the autonomous driving industry.” The other two holders are automotive firms Waymo and Nuro.

There is a list of competion in the autonomous taxi service industry ranging from Pony.ai, Baidu and WeRide, all of these companies have already deployed robotaxi programs in different cities. Other companies, like Momenta, are mainly focused on building and selling software for self-driving taxis to partners, which may enable even more robotaxi fleets to launch. The Chinese government has created several large funds for industries including autonomous driving, 5G and artificial intelligence, as it tries to balance the economic impact of the coronavirus. AutoX also has plans to build out it’s Robotaxi service in Europe but in the meantime the service will only be available for bookings through Shanghai-based taxi fleet Letzgo’s app.

A representative from AutoX came out with a statement basically saying that this year, the coronavirus pandemic demonstrated the need for contactless services, which encouraged the government to move faster with autonomous technology. AutoX’s move is the latest example of Chinese autonomous driving companies stepping onto the global stage in the race for dominance in driverless mobility. AutoX is seeking to leapfrog over it’s domestic rivals Pony.ai and WeRide, both of which have reached the 1 million-kilometer fully autonomous test drive mark in November. China has certainly recieved a head start when it comes to experimenting and testing with this idea as they emerged out of the lockdown much earlier than the U.S whose companies in a similar field were forced to shut-down all of their outdoor tests due to the pandemic and they had to rely almost entirely on simulation for their experimentations.

To sum up, I think that having an autonomous taxi service especially during a pandemic and with all the social distancing going on, it can be very beneficial not only to the public but to the society as a whole. Evidently, the risk of getting infected is definitely having an impact on our transportation choices, so with no driver on board the passengers have one less potential risk or safety issue to worry about. On the other hand, I wouldn’t 100% recommend it because there is always a possibilty of something going wrong software-wise or the sensors might fail to detect incoming vehicles from approching different directions. Therefore, the service can be prone to accidents but apart from that I think that this is definitely a step towards the future, so companies should just keep perfecting this idea to make it flawless when put to test.

Sources:

https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/16/autox-launches-its-robotaxi-service-in-shanghai-competing-with-didis-pilot-program/

https://www.techspot.com/news/87836-autox-first-company-bring-fully-driverless-robotaxi-vehicles.html

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/19/autox-pony-ai-california-robotaxis/

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