The writer is co-founder and CTO of Chinese autonomous vehicle company Pony.aiAt this year’s Beijing auto show, robotaxis moved from the margins to the centre for the first time. Automakers, mobility platforms and technology groups all presented their versions of autonomous ride-hailing. The show signalled that robotaxis are no longer an experiment conducted by a handful of specialists but the next phase of how we travel.
本文作者是中国自动驾驶公司小马智行(Pony.ai)联合创始人兼首席技术官
Still, a crowded race is not the same as a mature one. Launching a robotaxi is becoming easier but building one that can scale commercially and operate safely remains difficult.
在今年的北京车展上，无人驾驶出租车(robotaxi)首次从边缘走到了中心，成为人们瞩目的焦点。各汽车制造商、出行平台和科技集团纷纷展示了各自的自动驾驶网约车。这次车展表明，无人驾驶出租车不再只是少数专业人士的实验，而是关乎我们下一阶段的出行方式。
For much of the past decade, the autonomous-driving industry has behaved as if the decisive breakthrough would come from a lab: larger models, more training data, more simulation and more compute. That view is wrong. A robotaxi’s own reactions will change the behaviour of other road users in ways that historical data cannot always predict.
不过，一场参赛者众多的竞赛并不等于一场成熟的竞赛。推出一款无人出租车变得越来越容易了，但要打造一款能够实现商业化规模且安全运营的无人出租车仍非易事。