This year Pony.ai announced they had received a permit "to provide fare-charging driverless robotaxi services in Beijing". Credit: Pony.ai
When the Biden administration announced expansive new chip export controls this month, its main target was the Chinese military.
A host of other organizations have been caught in the crossfire, however — including Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle (AV) startup founded in California by two prodigious Chinese-born engineers. Whether the company can eventually succeed in bringing self-driving cars to the mass market may now depend not just on its technological prowess, but on its political acumen too.
This week, The Wire looks at Pony.ai: the self-driving car startup’s emergence and warm welcome in China, and the challenges it faces amid U.S.-China technological decoupling.
CALIFORNIA UPSTART
Pony.ai was founded in 2016 by James Peng and Lou Tiancheng, two engineers who formerly worked in Chinese internet search giant Baidu’s AV division. Peng holds a doctorate from Stanford and spent over a decade at Google and Baidu; Lou received his PhD at leading Chine
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When Ken Wilcox, a former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, moved to Shanghai in 2011, he was optimistic and eager to start up the bank's new joint venture in China. A decade later, however, he is extremely cynical about U.S. business interests in China. While analysts will, rightly, be debating SVB's missteps in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, Wilcox insists the bank's challenges in China should not be overlooked.
The former secretary of state talks about how the Trump administration changed U.S.-China relations; why he accused Beijing of genocide in Xinjiang; and why U.S. politicians should visit Taiwan.
