When it comes to self-driving cars, Beijing and Silicon Valley aren’t so different

Beijing looks a lot like Silicon Valley — at least when it comes to autonomous vehicles. 

The first-ever city report on autonomous vehicle testing in Beijing was released last week, and seven of the eight companies included are also on the road in California. 

While California boasts 62 companies trying to bring self-driving to the public and Beijing only has eight, there’s a lot of overlap. There is also a clear dominant player in each market. In the U.S., it’s Google’s Waymo. In China, Baidu.

In a translated chart provided by Baidu, seven of the eight companies testing in the Chinese capital are also testing in California, with headquarters based in Silicon Valley. Tencent didn’t have a CA testing permit as of earlier this year, but it’s reportedly building out a self-driving research team in Palo Alto. BAIC BJEV has an electric car presence in Silicon Valley, but has no autonomous vehicles on the road there yet. 

The top Beijing companies in terms of miles tested, Baidu and Pony.AI, are driving in both the U.S. and China. Baidu has been road testing in California since 2016 and dominated the Beijing report with more than 80 percent of qualified vehicles on the road. 

The American counterpart to Baidu has a lot more mileage (Waymo last reported reaching more than 10 million self-driven miles, while Baidu lists almost 90,000 miles in Beijing), but both respectively overshadow the closest competition. 

Another similarity: Waymo launched its self-driving taxi service, Waymo One, in Phoenix, Arizona, at the end of last year, and although there are many limitations, it was the first company in the U.S. to offer a self-driving car service to the public. Baidu is launching 100 robo-taxis on 130 miles of road in Changsha in Hunan province.

A 2019 autonomous vehicles Readiness Index from KPMG ranked the U.S. fourth most ready for self-driving cars, while China lagged behind in 20th place, mostly because of delayed government approval for testing.