If the advent of Robotaxis is already an inevitable trend, then the next question is how to do it and who will do it.

Top autonomous driving companies from China and the United States play an important role in this global technological transformation, with Waymo from Google in the United States and Luobo Kuaibao from China being typical examples. Now, a new disruptor has entered the scene—Tesla.

On October 11, Tesla officially launched the much-anticipated self-driving taxi, Cybercab, at the "We, Robot" event in Los Angeles, USA. The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals, can charge感应ively, and is expected to cost less than $30,000, with an estimated official launch in 2026.

A fierce competition around autonomous driving technology, market, and discourse has officially begun.

1. The arrival of a new "wolf" has formed a tripartite pattern.

The competition for the top-level ecosystem of advanced technology often determines the discourse in multiple fields for the next ten to twenty years. In the past few years, Chinese and American tech giants have been competing and playing games in the competition. Although domestic companies have experienced setbacks, they have also been striving to catch up in reflection.

Autonomous driving is one of the few top competitive fields for Chinese and American tech giants in recent years, and now it has entered the "finals" in the Robotaxi field.

Musk arrived at the press conference in the latest self-driving taxi "Cybercab" released by Tesla. This scene can't help but remind people of the historic moment in 2017 when Robin Li of Baidu drove an autonomous driving car into the Fifth Ring Road, officially opening the era of Chinese autonomous driving. Not only this moment, but many details announced at Tesla's press conference have been realized by Luobo Kuaibao one step ahead. As foreign netizens commented, Musk wants to control the cost price of Cybercab at 200,000, but Luobo Kuaibao achieved it in 2022.

Tesla's entry into the autonomous driving field at this time is different from when Baidu first entered the game. Today's market is relatively mature. Since 2017, Baidu has promoted the development of autonomous driving, and domestic players have basically formed a closed loop of technology and market. In contrast, Tesla's Robotaxi business has just started, and the global attention to the autonomous driving field is more due to its significant role as a player in the electric car field. This background undoubtedly adds a lot of weight to Tesla's entry.

Tesla's entry at this time may be aimed at the opportunity to pick the "fruit" of the market, especially its FSD (Full Self-Driving) system is expected to be approved for use in China in 2025. The global autonomous driving industry is gradually moving from technology to marketization and becoming more mature.As Tesla launched its self-driving business, Baidu's autonomous driving business also received significant news.

On October 9th, it was reported that Luobo Kuaibao is actively working on a global layout, having engaged in in-depth cooperation with multiple international companies, and plans to enter the overseas market. By collaborating with leading global automotive and technology companies, Baidu aims to establish a benchmark for Chinese autonomous driving in the international market, showcasing China's innovative strength and international competitiveness in this field.

Of course, as another giant in the autonomous driving field, Google is not absent.

Waymo, supported by Google, has been promoting its driverless taxi service in several cities across the United States, and its expansion pace continues to accelerate. On October 2nd, Waymo announced that it is about to open driverless taxi services in Austin, Texas, initially offering them to specific users through the Waymo One app, with plans to transition to the Uber platform by early 2025.

In a short period of time, the three major autonomous driving giants, Tesla, Baidu, and Google, have successively announced significant progress, and the autonomous driving industry seems to be truly on the verge of a new round of transformation. Under the new competitive situation, Tesla, Baidu, and Google, these three giants, have gradually established the "three major families" pattern in the global autonomous driving field.

In this market, Tesla and Google, as the "wolves from outside," are capturing the market through innovation and strong offensive, while Baidu plays the role of the "wolf going out," actively laying out globally.

The competition in the global autonomous driving field is becoming more and more intense, gradually entering the final stage.

Back to the domestic market, domestic autonomous driving companies also need to show a stronger "wolf nature." Baidu is actively going international, but it also needs the support of a more open domestic market.

Professor Chen Yanyan from the School of Urban Transportation at Beijing University of Technology has a fair and incisive view on autonomous driving in China and the United States. The fair point is that "China and the United States have always been the two most powerful forces on the global unmanned driving chessboard. Over the past decade, China's unmanned driving has been striving to catch up with the United States, and it has now achieved a level playing field in terms of technology."

The incisive point is her belief that "for China to gain an advantage in future artificial intelligence competition, especially in the competition of unmanned driving, it requires the joint efforts of the government and enterprises. Measures include that China needs to take even bigger steps in the legislation of unmanned driving, and the government needs to provide the industry with a positive, open, and inclusive policy environment, fully leveraging China's rich scenario advantages to accelerate the implementation."2. The gun has sounded, and autonomous driving has entered the final round.

Autonomous driving is one of the few top-level duels in the technology fields of China and the United States in recent years, and at the same time, it is also a competition of systems and ecosystems.

In the competition for "discourse power", this race is far more than just technological leadership; it is a comprehensive industrial competition. As pointed out by Wang Xianjin, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Chief Engineer of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Transport, autonomous driving is the frontier of international scientific and technological competition and an important link in establishing the international competitiveness of the digital industry.

In the future, whoever can first seize a leading position in this blue ocean will gain higher industrial chain discourse power.

The competition among Chinese and American autonomous driving companies is not only about the mobility service market but also involves multiple fields such as communication, semiconductors, and the automotive industry.

The competition for autonomous driving discourse power can be understood by recalling the competition between Microsoft and Kingsoft many years ago.

Back then, Kingsoft's office software competed with Microsoft in the domestic market. Due to Microsoft's Windows system occupying the system convenience advantage, Microsoft has been dominating the domestic market in the office field for many years.

Without the discourse power of a top-level ecosystem, there will be no discourse power in the future autonomous driving ecosystem.

At present, autonomous driving is no longer a novelty and has begun to enter the lives of ordinary people in many cities. However, people's understanding of the future strategic position of autonomous driving is still insufficient. It is important to know that the "wolves outside" have already arrived. If domestic companies do not go global and cannot occupy a place in the global market competition, then the domestic market will also lose "discourse power."

Autonomous driving has always been about more than just driving itself.At present, Google, Tesla, and Baidu, as the three major global autonomous driving companies, are taking distinctly different paths.

Tesla's introduction of its FSD (Full Self-Driving) system and autonomous driving services indicates its adoption of a "pure vision + FSD" technical route, primarily relying on software algorithms to achieve end-to-end driving control through neural networks.

The core of Tesla also lies in leveraging its vast community of car owners to continuously accumulate driving data, which is used to train its autonomous driving system. Tesla's FSD system has accumulated more than 1.6 billion miles of driving data worldwide, driving rapid iteration of autonomous driving technology.

Google Waymo has always focused on deep integration of hardware systems. Its self-driving cars are equipped with lidar, high-definition cameras, and various sensors, striving to achieve a safe self-driving experience through high-precision maps and real-time computing. Waymo has successfully commercialized autonomous driving services in several cities in the United States, such as San Francisco.

Baidu has adopted a dual path of "single vehicle intelligence + vehicle-road collaboration" domestically. Its technical route emphasizes the collaborative operation of vehicles with road infrastructure, making self-driving cars more flexible and efficient in dealing with complex urban road conditions. The Apollo platform integrates high-precision maps, sensors, and Baidu's latest large model technology, achieving autonomous driving effects that are more than 10 times safer than human drivers in complex urban scenarios.

From the autonomous driving routes of these three major companies, it can be seen that autonomous driving covers multiple core areas of industry, including big data, artificial intelligence, large models, communication, chips, automotive manufacturing, lidar, etc. It can be said that autonomous driving concerns the development pattern of the entire high-tech and manufacturing industry in the future.

3. The potential trillion-dollar market is accelerating, and Robotaxi opens the upper limit.

Robotaxi is opening the upper limit of the commercial space of autonomous driving.

Roland Berger proposed that the five core elements for the commercialization of Robotaxi include government regulation, technology, cost, operations and services, and market acceptance, among which the three factors most directly related to marketization—technology, cost, and operations and services—have already been able to drive market change.

Taking the market operation of Luobo Kuaibao as an example. Relying on China's huge automotive market and the rapid advancement of urbanization, Luobo Kuaibao has conducted extensive testing and applications in many cities, with a cumulative order volume exceeding 7 million orders, and its self-driving vehicles cover more than ten cities nationwide.On the technical front, Baidu's Apollo platform, based on the latest large model technology, can achieve adaptive driving in complex scenarios.

As Baidu Luobo Kuaipao announced its intention to enter overseas markets, on October 9th, sources revealed that Baidu is about to release the Apollo Autonomous Driving Open Platform 10.0, equipped with Baidu's latest autonomous driving large model ADFM (Autonomous Driving Foundation Model), whose safety is considered to be more than 10 times that of human drivers.

In addition, the vehicles of Luobo Kuaipao are equipped with vehicle-road coordination and high-precision mapping systems, making the unmanned vehicles more capable of dealing with complex road conditions.

Of course, the reduction in the cost of autonomous driving cars is an important prerequisite for the expansion of the entire industry and the establishment of a viable business model.

At present, with the maturation of the Robotaxi market, the manufacturing cost per vehicle is also gradually decreasing. In May of this year, the cost reduction effect on the hardware side of the entire market will be very obvious. Taking Luobo Kuaipao as an example, the sixth-generation unmanned vehicle Yi Chi 06 is priced at only 204,600 yuan, which is a 60% decrease in cost compared to the fifth-generation unmanned vehicle.

In terms of services, Luobo Kuaipao has also paved a new route for the market's large-scale landing. Luobo Kuaipao has built an unmanned vehicle automatic service network, which can achieve full life cycle service automation of unmanned vehicles, including cloud-based one-click command to automatically wake up the vehicle, vehicle self-check, automatic dispatch, automatic scheduling service area, automatic storage, etc., without the need for manual intervention throughout the process.

The achievements of Chinese companies in the field of autonomous driving are due to the construction of China's market infrastructure in the past few years.

China's autonomous driving-related infrastructure is mature, and the policies are relatively complete. The leadership in vehicle-road coordination and V2X communication has enabled China's autonomous driving technology to achieve faster large-scale landing.

Compared with the autonomous driving technology in the United States, China's technology path pays more attention to the overall intelligence of the system. By reducing the development difficulty of single vehicle intelligence through vehicle-road coordination and improving overall safety.

However, at the same time, Chinese companies must also be clear about their own shortcomings. Compared with the United States' leading advantages in chips, hardware equipment, and algorithms, Chinese companies still need to continue to make efforts in these areas.The United States possesses advanced integrated circuit technology and has consistently maintained a leading position in the field of high-end chip design, laying a solid foundation for the development of high-performance automotive chips. Whether it is the "Waymo faction" of single-vehicle intelligence or the "Tesla faction," the core capabilities behind them are artificial intelligence algorithms and decision-making chips, which are where the United States holds its advantage.

Over the past few years, in the high-end competition of autonomous driving, Chinese companies have made tremendous efforts. Now, they have entered the final circle and face the challenges of the international market, requiring even more a fearless and determined attitude to move forward. This is a battle that cannot be lost, a key battle that concerns the future pattern of technological competition.