Is the US or China leading the autonomous vehicles race? - Asia Specific podcast, BBC World Service

Driverless cars are already carrying passengers in the US and China, so when will the rest of the world get robotaxis? Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 https://bbc.in/3VyyriM American and Chinese companies are far ahead in the autonomous vehicle space, but it’s harder to clearly say which of the two superpowers is leading the race. Vehicle and software makers are continuously updating their autonomous driving technology. Further development will partially depend on how much real world driving data they can collect and the variety of driving conditions that is feeding back into their systems. There have, however, been some speed bumps along the way. In April, 2026, for example, a mass robotaxi outage in Wuhan, China, immobilised a hundred self-driving cars across the city, prompting Chinese authorities to restrict new permits for fleet expansion and order safety reviews. In May, Waymo recalled thousands of self-driving cars from its fleet in the US over a software issue that could allow vehicles to drive into flood roads. On this episode of Asia Specific, our host Mariko Oi unpacks the the many challenges both American and Chinese companies face with Suranjana Tewari and Tu Le, both of whom were at the recent Beijing auto show. Suranjana is the BBC’s Asia Business correspondent, and has spoken to many Chinese businesses competing in the space. Tu is the founder and Managing Director of the consultancy Sino Auto Insights, and has spent time working in Detroit, Silicon Valley and China in both the tech and automotive sectors. 00:00 Introduction 01:19 Riding in a robotaxi 02:52 State of autonomous driving in China 03:57 What is Level 2 and Level 2+ driving? 07:13 Why do we need autonomous vehicles? 08:29 What's the situation in the US? 09:56 Challenges robotaxi companies face 10:27 What's driving Chinese autonomous vehicle development 12:03 Is China leading the race? 13:19 Is user experience or fast scaling the key advantage 15:26 Why Chinese are more enthusiastic about autonomous vehicles 17:52 What about job losses for drivers? 18:47 When will autonomous cars go mainstream? Will they be Chinese or American? Watch more episodes of Asia Specific here 👉🏽 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz_B0PFGIn4c3njIxB0KHuO8SS2mBMtUc Read more about the robotaxi outage in Wuhan, China here 👉🏽https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvge91r9j80o Read more about Waymo’s driverless fleet recall in the US here 👉🏽https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2011dl4xo Find out more about China’s auto sector here 👉🏽https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy01ele412yo ---------------- This is the official BBC World Service YouTube channel. If you like what we do, you can also find us here: Instagram 👉🏽 https://www.instagram.com/bbcworldservice Twitter 👉🏽 https://twitter.com/bbcworldservice Facebook 👉🏽 https://facebook.com/bbcworldservice BBC World Service website 👉🏽 https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio Thanks for watching and subscribing! #BBCWorldService #WorldService #cars #electriccar #tesla #autonomousdriving