Robotaxis are starting to become a reality after years of hype and promises. Self-driving cars are now on the road in cities like San Francisco, Shenzhen, and Wuhan, and robotaxi firms are foraying into new markets like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. And on Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested that half the U.S. population will have access to a robotaxi by 2026.
At this point, those working in the autonomous vehicle (AV) space think the problem isn’t technology, but rather people, and regulators in particular.
“It’s clearly mature enough to scale, but we have to work with the government on the regulation part,” said Kerry Xu, WeRide’s general manager for Singapore, at the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore conference on Wednesday. “Public acceptance, data, transparency … I think it takes time for the community to completely accept AVs as part of their normal life.”
Earlier this year, WeRide hosted Singapore Acting Transport Minister Jeffrey Siow at its Guangzhou headquarters, where the minister announced ambitious plans to debut AVs in the city’s public housing estates by the end of 2025. The Chinese startup also debuted Singapore’s first fully driverless bus system earlier in July.
ST Liew, president of Qualcomm’s Taiwan and Southeast Asia business, agreed that the private sector needed to help build an ecosystem of trust. “We always advocate that we should have cross-industry benchmark transparency in the training data and make sure that we are compliant,” he said.
“Take care of the safety, make sure that it is transparent, and then you can enjoy yourself while you’re in the car,” he continued.
Liew credited Qualcomm’s work on autonomous vehicles to the company’s four decades of experience working on semiconductors. He noted that the power of new chips allow for “AI at the edge” to make the process of learning, deduction, and decision-making more automated. This enables driverless cars to be deployed across different geographies and weather patterns, such as Southeast Asia.
Cars built in Asia, and particularly China, are now becoming more sophisticated, offering a wide array of customer-friendly assisted driving and software features, turning cars into smartphones on wheels.
Liew pointed out that the car industry is now shifting to the “software-defined car,” which allows drivers to do much more inside the vehicle.
“If I can go into the car, then I can conduct my meetings, I can use AI to ask where I am, book my restaurants, and all that,” Liew said, “just like it’s an extension of my office or my home.”