Robotaxis Are Blazing the Trail for Self-Driving Cars

Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared in the author’s newsletter, Exponential View.

When people ask me to describe my work, I say I take a critical look at exponential technologies—which I define as technologies that follow an exponential growth curve. I’m the founder of the research group
Exponential View, and my mission also includes critically reviewing my own analyses.

So here’s a reflection on my analyses of autonomous vehicles. I have long argued that self-driving cars are metaphorically miles away from being a reality. For years, I’ve tried to offer a tonic to the rah-rah hype that carmakers were foisting upon us through marketing.

In 2017, when many carmakers were promising that fully autonomous vehicles would be on the road imminently, I
wrote in MIT Technology Review:

KITT, the car from
Knight Rider, will remain the gold standard for autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicle pilots will become increasingly ambitious, but the real-world hurdles will still take time to navigate, even with friendly city regulators. None will ship to the public in 2018.

Five years later, I remained pessimistic, as
I wrote in my newsletter,Exponential View:

Max Chalkin analyzes the disappointing trajectory of full self-driving efforts: US $100 billion invested and little to show. The self-driving pioneer Anthony Levandowski, who cofounded Waymo, has retreated to building autonomous trucks constrained to industrial sites. He reckons that is the most complex use case the technology can deliver in the near future.
Why it matters: Self-driving could be a pointless distraction for improving the environmental and human impact of transport. It takes attention away from micromobility, better urban infrastructure, and other strategies to improve the safety, pollution, climate, equity and economic returns of this sector.

That was then and this is now. KITT remains awesome and I’m changing my mind about self-driving cars. Far from being a “pointless distraction,” they’re nearly ready for prime time. And robotaxis are leading the charge.

That’s not just based on a hunch. It’s based on an increasing mountain of evidence pointing to their adoption and evolution—evidence that the industry is making progress on overlapping “S-curves.” These S-curves in technology typically show slow initial progress, followed by rapid advancement, and then a leveling off as the technology matures. Here’s how I’m thinking about the development of self-driving cars now.

Two autonomous taxis, from Pony.ai and Baidu’s Apollo Go, cross paths in Beijing. VCG/Getty Images

Baidu and Waymo Robotaxis Show the Way

In bellwether cities that have historically been ahead of the curve on tech adoption, we’re seeing more self-driving vehicles on the road—with robotaxis spearheading this revolution. Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, is striving to become “the world’s first driverless city.” So far,…