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Is China cooking waymo?

Jordan Schneider · ChinaTalk · ·16 min read
Commentary by Hex Index staff

The AV Race Isn't About Who Drives Better — It's About Who Owns the Road

Jordan Schneider's latest piece for ChinaTalk cuts through the usual "US versus China" framing to reveal something more tangled: the autonomous vehicle industries are so deeply intertwined that neat distinctions collapse. Chinese firms have secured deployment deals with over thirteen countries. The United States has two. That gap tells a story about infrastructure, supply chains, and the quiet leverage that comes from controlling the hardware beneath the software.

Deployment Numbers Tell Only Part of the Story

Schneider opens with a striking comparison: Chinese autonomous-vehicle operators have collectively logged roughly 149 million autonomous miles, compared to around 106 million miles for US firms — a roughly 1.4 to 1 advantage. But he immediately cautions against taking mileage at face value. "Companies report different levels of autonomy, mix supervised and driverless miles, and disclose data unevenly across jurisdictions," Schneider writes.

Is China cooking waymo?

Ridership offers another lens. China has completed approximately 30 million rides, versus roughly 20 million for the US. Yet Schneider argues that ridership itself misses a big part of the story, because China's AV industry extends far beyond passenger ride-hailing. By the end of 2024, more than 6,000 driverless delivery vehicles were reportedly operating across 100+ city zones in China. Companies like Neolix, Zelos, Meituan, JD Logistics, and Alibaba's Cainiao are actively piloting or scaling operations for shipping, food delivery, and street-cleaning vehicles.

The US, by contrast, doesn't yet have road-going driverless AVs deployed at scale. Companies like Nuro remain limited to pilots and R&D fleets. They do have an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 sidewalk AVs, but China has many of these also, and they are a much simpler technology.

"Chinese companies are also exporting something closer to a full autonomy stack — vehicles bundled with cloud services, AI traffic management systems, and road sensors."

Pilot Zones: Golf Cart Country Club or Smart City Laboratory?

A common critique of China's AV progress is that its pilot zones create artificial environments — bragging about safety records there is like bragging about avoiding accidents while driving a golf cart around a country club. Schneider rejects this framing. China has pioneered an ambitious pilot zone strategy, reshaping large portions of cities to accommodate AVs through vehicle-road-cloud integration. Intersections broadcast signal timing, cameras extend line-of-sight, and cloud systems coordinate traffic flows.

Wuhan's pilot zones started small but now blanket the entire city, with AVs driving alongside cyclists, scooterers, and jaywalkers. Schneider

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Is China cooking waymo?

by Jordan Schneider · ChinaTalk · Read full article

In terms of international expansion, Chinese firms are way ahead of the American competition. Chinese companies have worked out Autonomous Vehicle (AV) deployment deals with more than thirteen countries. The US: two. Chinese companies are also exporting something closer to a full autonomy stack — vehicles bundled with cloud services, AI traffic management systems, and road sensors.

There’s also the supply chain. Unlike frontier AI models, where US export controls on Hopper and Blackwell GPUs have genuinely constrained China’s progress, AVs operate in a different hardware regime. Here, the leverage between the US and China is more evenly matched, and in some cases, inverted.

Today’s Content:

AVs in the US and China

The International AV market

Who has leverage in the AV supply chain

At times, this piece reads like a typical “US vs China” article, but in fact we’re seeing more of a “co-opetition” dynamic Kevin Xu highlighted in the AI industry. In fact, the perhaps more interesting aspect is how the line between “Chinese AV company” and “US AV company” blurs in practice. Chinese AVs use NVIDIA chips, Waymo uses Chinese-made Zeekr vehicles, and Uber and Lyft partner with Chinese AV firms internationally, not to mention critical minerals. The industries are too tangled for neat distinctions… but let’s try to untangle them anyway.

1. AVs in the US and China.

The US has Waymo. China has its “big three”: Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide, and Pony.ai (whose founders ChinaTalk interviewed last year).

There are other potential players in the US, like Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla (RIP GM’s Cruise). But right now, Waymo is the only American company operating a scaled, paid Level-4 robotaxi service, which enables vehicles to handle all driving tasks within specific operating zones. China also has BYD and Xiaomi with L2 driving features (who could transition to L4 soon), and many more robovan, robus, robodelivery, and robotruck companies on track for L4 deployment.

In aggregate terms, China appears to have the edge in overall deployment. An analysis by SCSP suggests Chinese autonomous-vehicle operators have collectively logged roughly 149 million autonomous miles, compared to around 106 million miles for US firms — a roughly 1.4 to 1 advantage.1

But mileage comparisons are limited. Companies report different levels of autonomy, mix supervised and driverless miles, and disclose data unevenly across jurisdictions. Ridership is a different way to look at it, where China has completed ~30 million rides, versus ...