- Uber is teaming up with Chinese firm WeRide to bring its robotaxis to 15 new cities.
- CEO Tony Han told BI the deal would help WeRide scale and solve the very hardest robotaxi problems.
- Don't expect to see WeRide's robotaxis in the US, however; Han said the company is focusing on Europe and the Middle East.
Chinese firm WeRide is the latest piece of Uber's robotaxi puzzle.
The two companies announced last week that WeRide's driverless taxis would be coming to the Uber app in 15 cities outside the US and China over the next five years. It did not reveal the list of cities.
The deal is the latest in a series that Uber has struck with self-driving companies, and WeRide's CEO told Business Insider that the expanded partnership would supercharge the development of WeRide's autonomous vehicles.
"Uber's scale is very important. There are some long-tail problems, you have to have the scalability in order to find them," Tony Han told Business Insider.
For self-driving cars, "long-tail problems" refer to unusual scenarios that rarely show up in everyday driving, making them difficult to simulate.
Training robotaxis to deal with these 'edge case' situations can require massive vehicle fleets and thousands of miles of real-world driving.
It's a problem all robotaxi companies face — including Tesla's upcoming robotaxi service in Texas, with CEO Elon Musk telling investors last month the automaker's fleet was driving "all over Austin in circles" to identify edge cases before the June launch.
Han said operating its vehicles on the Uber app across multiple continents would give WeRide the chance to prove the safety of its technology, adding that the company has yet to record an accident in over 2,000 days of robotaxi operation.
"This will just convince people that taking WeRide's products and robotaxi service is safe. And our goal is to make robotaxi safer than a human driver," said Han.
Founded in 2017, WeRide has ridden China's robotaxi boom to a $4 billion valuation, and is one of the few Chinese autonomous vehicle companies to operate beyond its home market.
The Guangzhou-based firm tests and operates a range of autonomous vehicles — including robotaxis, robovans, and robo-road sweepers — across 10 countries.
WeRide's expanded partnership with Uber, which also saw the ride-hailing giant invest an extra $100 million in the Chinese self-driving company, comes after the two companies teamed up to launch a robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi last year, with Dubai set to follow soon.
Han told BI that the Abu Dhabi robotaxi service had been a success, with the company "aggressively recruiting" local operational staff, and said the expansion would take a "phased approach" with several cities being added in Europe and the Middle East over the next five years.
"The deal with Uber gives us another layer of confidence, because Uber has already rolled out their car-hailing service in all of these countries," said Han.
"This will actually reduce our efforts to a large extent. We only need to focus on autonomous driving technology and relevant regulations. We don't need to worry too much about the car-hailing service part, about the user acquisition part," he added.
Global robotaxi race heats up
Han has worked in the autonomous vehicle industry in China and the US.
Prior to founding WeRide in 2017, he was a professor of computer engineering at the University of Missouri and worked in Silicon Valley as Baidu's chief scientist. He told BI that both the US and China have a wealth of technical knowledge and robotaxi know-how.
However, he added that China's robotaxi industry has at least two advantages over its Pacific rival — the country's booming EV industry, which Han said drives innovation and keeps costs down, and its famously chaotic roads.
"In China, the number of complicated scenarios offers a very good testing environment, which enables robust algorithm development for WeRide," Han said.
WeRide is one of a handful of Chinese robotaxi firms with a permit to test its vehicles on public roads in California, but the company has no plans to begin commercial operations in the US anytime soon.
Earlier this year, the outgoing Biden administration finalized rules effectively banning Chinese vehicle software from the US, which also barred Chinese companies from testing robotaxis on US roads.
Asked about the new rules, Han said the company had no commercial operations in the US and was focused on markets in Europe, the Middle East, Singapore, and potentially Japan.
"We have already got our hands full. There are a lot of things we need to do in the Middle East and European market," he added.
China's self-driving boom hits a speed bump
China has seen an explosion in autonomous vehicle technology in recent years, with EV giants like BYD offering driver assist tech in nearly all their vehicles for free.
A recent survey by consulting firm AlixPartners found that more than half of the cars sold in China last year were equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which operate some vehicle functions but require driver supervision, compared to less than 40% in the US.
The robotaxi boom has hit a speed bump in recent months, however, with authorities issuing a sweeping overhaul of regulations after a fatal crash involving a Xiaomi EV in March.
Unlike BYD and Xiaomi, WeRide operates fully autonomous robotaxis. The company also has a deal with German firm Bosch to use its technology in driver assistance systems for passenger cars in China.
Han said that both robotaxis and ADAS-equipped vehicles needed to go through "a very thorough process" to ensure they were safe to operate.
"No matter if you are driving a private car or you are sitting in a robotaxi, we want human transportation to be much more reliable and much safer. So I think safety is always the priority," he said.
