US Autonomous Vehicle Market Dominance Under Threat By China Posted on : Aug 29 - 2019

The buzz around autonomous vehicles is continuing to snowball as global tech majors are upping their game to take advantage of the burgeoning prospects.

Per an Allied Market Research report , the global autonomous vehicle market is expected to reach $556.67 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 39.47% from 2019 to 2026.

The long-term prospects are much more alluring. Per a McKinsey research autonomous vehicles are expected to contribute about 66% of the passenger-kilometers traveled in 2040, generating $1.1 trillion in mobility services revenues and $0.9 trillion in sales that year.

U.S. Leading the Race

The United States is leveraging its first mover advantage in the autonomous vehicle market. Notably, California opened its public roads for testing driverless vehicles way back in 2014. This enabled U.S. developers like Alphabet GOOGL division Waymo to test millions of miles in the state alone.

Major companies like Apple AAPL , Tesla TSLA , Intel, Uber and NVIDIA have taken several initiatives, including partnering with global automakers like Toyota TM , Volvo, BMW to strengthen their footprint in the market.

Moreover, Tesla's current fleet of vehicles now represents partial automation, which the company aims to fully convert into self-driving platforms.

Per Modor Intelligence, the U.S. autonomous car market is expected to witness a CAGR of about 46.39% between 2019 and 2024.

China: A Potential Challenger?

Chinese developers like Baidu BIDU are catching up fast with their U.S. counterparts. Baidu is the leading tester in China, having covered about 87,000 miles in testing in Beijing last year. However, this is considerably less than a typical month for Waymo.

China's policymakers believe that the autonomous vehicles industry is crucial for the country to be successful in its strategy to transform into an AI-led economy by 2030. The government is targeting large-scale adoption of early-stage vehicles in 2020, and expects 10% of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to be fully autonomous.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that China is testing autonomous vehicles in a dedicated highway in east Shandong.  

Recently, Chinese autonomous-driving company Pony.ai partnered with Toyota to expedite the development and deployment of self-driving vehicles. The pilot cars are likely to start operating on public roads in Beijing and Shanghai in September 2019, leveraging Pony.ai's autonomous driving system in Lexus RX vehicles. View More