TechCrunch Mobility: A new robotaxi scorecard shows China’s dominance

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Today is Juneteenth, a U.S. federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States. About 10 years ago, there was a lot of chatter about who was winning the self-driving car race. One of the problems with that debate — besides assuming there would be just one winner — was that no one had a reliable way to measure it. This was an early era filled with a lot of demos and capital, but little substance — at least what the public, and folks like myself, had access to. Advisory and research startup Autnmy AI has developed a generative AI platform to create a benchmarking system that evaluates and ranks autonomous vehicle companies in an effort to answer that question in real time. And this week, the startup released its Road to Autonomy Index, which searches relevant global public databases, including federal and state reports, SEC documents, public exchanges, and other data. The system weighs the company’s operations, scale, revenue, commercial partnerships, manufacturing, and safety record based on that data and provides an update every 12 hours. There are four indices that rank robotaxis, autonomous driving licensing companies, autonomous trucks, and delivery bots. One important note, per Autnmy AI co-founder Rob Grant, the AI platform doesn’t just scrape information off the internet. “We agreed early on, we don t scrape information,” he said. “If it s publicly available or if it s available under a Creative Commons license, we will use that information. We do have some license data that we pay folks for, and under that agreement too.” The indices take a global approach, which produces some interesting results. One of the initial takeaways that made an impression on Grant was China’s stronger ranking across multiple categories. As of Friday, the robotaxi leader was not Waymo. It was China’s Baidu Apollo Go program — just barely. Waymo was in the secondary position, followed by Chinese companies Pony.ai and WeRide. Tesla was in the fifth position. I was reminded recently by a little bird to keep an eye on the Texas automated vehicle tracker tool that launched in May. And I am glad they did; looks like Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox are building up their respective fleets in the state. Reminder: This doesn’t mean every one of these are being used commercially. Zoox, for instance, cannot operate commercially until it receives an exemption from the federal government. It currently has the ability to give rides in its custom-built robotaxi but cannot charge customers. As of May 28, Waymo had 577 autonomous vehicles registered in the state. It now has 620 of them, about a 7.5% increase in less than a month. Tesla now has 69 registered autonomous vehicles, a 64% increase from the 42 it had on May 28. Zoox, which had 35 registered autonomous vehicles last month, now has 43. Avride, Nuro, and Volkswagen subsidiary MOIA are holding steady at 317, 47, and 12, respectively. Got a tip for us? Email Kirsten Korosec at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or my Signal at kkorosec.07, or email Sean O Kane at sean.okane@techcrunch.com. Cargofy, a logistics company that uses AI to automate freight operations, raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by u.ventures, Toloka, and Movens Capital. Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom, and several angel investors, also participated. Carro, the Singapore-based online car marketplace, acquired Australian used-car platform CarPlace, Reuters reported. Terms were not disclosed. Gatik, a startup that has developed self-driving trucks for short hauls, announced a multi-year partnership with PepsiCo. The companies wouldn’t share the value of this deal, but it does signal PepsiCo’s commitment to Gatik, which is already operating driverless trucks for the food and beverage giant across Arkansas, Arizona, and Texas. QuantumScape announced a joint research agreement with Honda R&D Co. to accelerate solid-state battery development and associated manufacturing processes. Automaker Stellantis, self-driving startup Wayve, and ride-hailing giant Uber struck a deal to jointly develop and deploy driverless robotaxis. XDOF, a startup focused on robot training data, raised $70 million from Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, a16z, Lux, and WndrCo. A video posted on Reddit showed a driver running a stop sign and hitting an autonomous vehicle in Dallas. TechCrunch confirmed it was an Avride robotaxi, which was hailed via the Uber app. An Avride spokesperson said no injuries were reported and that data from the incident is being reviewed “to continuously refine our technology and processes, as part of our standard procedures.” When asked about the reaction of the self-driving system and the human safety operator who was behind the wheel, Avride said, “Our safety review is currently ongoing, so we cannot

TechCrunch Mobility: A new robotaxi scorecard shows China’s dominance

Key takeaways

More in computer-science