Will Autonomous Cars be China’s New Great Leap Forward?
By Michael Sheldrick, Executive Editor
In just over 50 years, China has transformed itself to a highly industrialized urbanized powerhouse. Along with that, it has afflicted itself with what is arguably the world's worst urban congestion and pollution, not to mention the world's leading greenhouse gas emitter.
But these problems may provide the incentive to aggressively tackle them. That, along with a rising spirit of entrepreneurialism in China -- and a more powerful command-and-control government than in the democratic industrialized countries -- could, in the view of some observers, propel China to leadership in developing autonomous cars.
Xavier Mosquet of the Boston Consulting Group told The New York Times that China could be the largest market for autonomous vehicles, and sees taxis as leading the trend. “It’s not that people are more willing to use the cars in Beijing or Shanghai, it’s that the economic value is much higher in China than in the U.S.,” he told the Times, adding that air pollution could be as much a catalyst as bad traffic.
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