Chinese robotaxis that don't give way

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Shenzhen . Robotaxis, or self-driving taxis , are becoming increasingly popular in America, where the leading company in the sector, Waymo, operates an advanced fleet of Jaguars between San Francisco and Phoenix. In the other world superpower, China, the testing area involves a larger number of cities and companies, but is still limited to a few specific neighborhoods of its megacities . We boarded a robotaxi operated by one such company, Xiao Ma, literally "little horse," anglicized as Pony.ai (a company now listed on the Nasdaq) in Shenzhen, and discovered some interesting aspects.

The experience is complex for a Westerner right from the moment of booking: Pony.ai isn't a standalone app, but a mini WeChat program used within the Chinese super-app, and requires at least a superficial understanding of the ideograms to book. Unlike Western competitors, you can't board the vehicle anywhere, but only at specific points specified on the map, which is otherwise difficult to navigate and offers a very poor user experience.

The car is a solid Lexus, not particularly equipped except for the loud speakers that allow the vehicle to communicate with passengers in Mandarin. Pony has a reputation for having the most aggressive driving on the market, especially after its six test vehicles in the United States were stopped after one of them hit road signs. The vehicle demonstrates its boldness at the first pedestrian crossing, when it invades the crosswalk, anticipating pedestrians and electric motorcycles who are about to cross—something unthinkable for American robotaxis . It's also true that the streets of Shenzhen, compared to those of California or Phoenix, are simpler, as is normal in a city founded forty years ago, but also immensely more complex due to the variety and quantity of vehicles that cross it. The result is a syncopated driving style, made up of sudden accelerations where at times the recorded speed exceeds the posted speed by several kilometers .

The control panel inside the cockpit is well-designed: the screens available to passengers play promotional videos in which an elderly taxi driver appears overly impressed by the technology that will presumably take his job, while the company's young and ambitious co-founders alternate with attractive influencers in explaining the revolution that Pony.ai aims to bring to the market. Some features are explained in the menu, available in both Mandarin and English . One of the main problems arises when pressing the button that leads to the terms and conditions, particularly regarding privacy and video recordings inside the cockpit: in this case, the dual-language version is disabled, and you are faced with a wall of ideograms that makes it impossible to know your rights in this regard.

The fourteen-minute journey ends at a ridiculously low price, in line with but slightly lower than the already excellent fares offered by Didi, China's Uber : less than one yuan per minute, for a total of about one euro and sixty cents for the entire ride—less than the average cost of a European public transport ride. Moreover, electric sedans here no longer cost more than a dozen thousand euros, thanks to the dual effect of the vast economies of scale that make batteries (which account for about 40 percent of the cost of an electric vehicle) extremely affordable, and the generous government subsidies to the few of the more than thirty companies in the sector that have survived turbulent years of ruthless commercial competition over the last decade.

If the traffic of the future will be governed by vehicles that respond to etiquette and ethical dilemmas differently depending on where they were manufactured, then let's prepare for a near future of adrenaline-fueled autonomous cars that won't give us the right of way .

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