Name: Intelligence in Motion: Mobility and Urban Futures
Uploaded: 2026-09-10
Duration: 14 min 22 s

Robotaxis are no longer a distant promise. In China, they are becoming part of daily urban life. As of early 2026, over 50 Chinese cities allow self-driving cars on public roads for testing; at least 10 permit commercial operations. Autonomous driving developer Pony AI has targeted to put 3,500 robotaxis on the road by the end of the year. The company’s cofounder and CEO, James Peng, has built his company around a practical premise: autonomous vehicles cannot wait for purpose-built smart cities; they must learn to operate safely and reliably on the roads cities already have. As Pony AI expands its operations in China and internationally, Peng will discuss what widespread autonomous mobility could mean for passengers, professional drivers, and the design of cities themselves. A central question is whether AI will make today’s urban infrastructure work differently, or whether truly autonomous cities will eventually require us to rethink existing urban systems altogether. 

Dr. James Peng, Founder and CEO , Pony.ai 
Nicholas Gordon, Editor, Asia, Fortune 

Intelligence in Motion: Mobility and Urban Futures

Conferences

Good morning everyone, and I wonder if we can have James up on screen. James, it's so great to have you here with today. I know you're very busy and so thank you for giving us this time today. You know, I, I wanna start this conversation with a confession and that confession is I absolutely hate driving. I hate driving a car. I hate dealing with traffic. I hate dealing with parking. So why don't you give us a timeline. Of how long we might be able to when we might be able to expect kind of robo taxis to be commercial, to be ubiquitous, to be widespread, kind of how long are we thinking before these robotaxis become more common. Hi, Nicholas. Hi, this is James. Uh, it's great to be here and uh There's a bit ico. So Uh, do I see a bit of echola? Uh, anyhow, the, uh, Uh, can, can we turn off the, uh, mic somewhere? I see, I, I hear the echo. But anyhow, let me just go, go ahead and start. So, uh, I mean, as you already described, there's already commercial usage of the robotaxi in, uh, certain cities. For example, in China, we have launched commercial robotaxi services in the four tier one cities in China, uh, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, uh. And of course, our main focus for the next several years will be focusing on scaling and putting the vehicles to be ubiquitous, right? So, I think there there are several limiting factors. One is regulation, the other is the capital and the resource needed to manufacture the vehicles and put them into uh uh many different cities. And the third, of course, is building the customer consensus and the willingness to actually having the services. I think all those takes time, but what we have seen is that the flying wheel is already there. We have uh See, at least from our current operations, customers love them. Uh, we, on average, I think we have about 25 rides per vehicle per day. And, uh, so, so to answer your question, in short, I think it's a matter of, uh, getting more and more. Uh, vehicles manufactured and getting the regulation ready. I think the technology problem is pretty much already solved. So, so maybe, maybe look at another five years, you'll be able to see in, in most of the major cities. Around the world, you'll be able to have, uh, get, get you a regular, regular, uh, service, and you'll be able to hail in a robotaxi just like a normal taxi. And, and let's talk about some of those major cities in the world because I know you're, uh, you have this aggressive global expansion plan. You're in Zagreb, um, in Croatia. You have this new partnership with Uber for Europe and the Middle East. I think you also just expanded into South Korea. So how are you thinking about these, these global markets and what's your approach to, you know, entering a new city? Uh, when, when we considering, because our resources are limited, so when we considering a city to enter into, there are several factors we consider. One is It, it should be a city that relatively has a mature taxi service, right? It, it's the taxi fare is relatively high, so there will be potential demand. The second factor is on the regulatory front. The, uh, at least, even, even if there's no existing regulations to support robotaxi, there should be a pathway already exist, uh, to support it. And the third, of course, is have a strong local partnership. I think with all three factors to consider, that will be a candidate city that we will enter into. That's why we, we consider definitely currently Europe. Uh, Middle East, I think South Korea, Japan, uh, uh, Southeast Asia, that'll be our main focus for now. And you know, tell us more about these, about these partnerships. So when you're working with someone like Uber, what are you getting from them and what are your partners getting from you? Because think about it, it, even a regular taxi, let, let, let alone a robo taxi requires different partnerships, right? There's user acquisition, uh, Such as Uber. There's a vehicle manufacturer, and there's a driver. Besides that, there's also backend services, right, such as cleaning, servicing, charging, and all that. So you, you, you can think of Pony as providing a driver, a virtual driver that, that's safe, reliable, uh, consistent, and will make the driving a fun experience. But besides the driving itself, right, we, we want a trusted partner in the local markets that the local residents are already familiar with. For example, that like Uber as a global ride-hailing, uh, platform, uh, most of the people are familiar and trust. So, so essentially, our partnership with Uber is that Uber can provide uh a, a customer acquisition tool and also we work together to push the boundaries of the local regulation to support. Robotaxi. So, so I think the partnership is essential in our global expansion. So how do you think that You know, urban transit, urban planning might change as robo taxis become more common. You know, you might expect maybe, you know, on the negative side it could be that there are more cars on the road, fewer people take buses, take the subway. On the other hand, you know, automated driving may be safer than human drivers for a variety of reasons. There are kind of implications for labor and for jobs, but how do you see kind of this again this question of urban mobility changing as we have more robotaxis on the road? Uh, 000, I think the automated driving, such as robotaxi, it could be other forms of automated driving that actually will make, uh, mobility to be much more easily accessible. Uh, it could be that there's less usage of subways, but that on the other hand, there could be much less usage of self-driven cars that in a, in a way, think about a lot of urban space. Uh, uh, uh, built for parking where the personal used cars are very less efficiently used, right? Most of the cars drive like 2 hours a day. So, so if there's robotaxi becomes more, more ubiquitous everywhere, then, then it can be, will save more parking space. Well, it can be that the, the mobility becomes much easily accessible. Then maybe, maybe the urban planning will be different because, because the mobility. If it becomes ubiquitous and everywhere, you, you, you may not need to live in the city center. So, so I think the implication is, uh, will, will be profound and probably still. Eventually we will change the whole urban planning and it changed the way of our life. And of course with with all new technologies I mean there's an element of kind of trust getting people used to the idea there's working with regulators there's convincing potential customers um I know China earlier this year briefly paused robotaxi rollouts because of you know incident involving one of your competitors. Um, but kind of what's your strategy for, you know, working with regulators to convince them of trust and safety, to encourage customers that it's totally fine that this car has no driver, don't worry about it, kind of what, what's your strategy for those kinds of stakeholder engagements? Yes, I, I think the most important one, of course, is by, by facts, by metrics. So, so we, we actually, uh, by working with the regulators, we show, we, we have all the, uh, data that we collected on the safety side, on the convenience side, on the impact to the, uh, local transportation network. So I, I think seeing is believing, right? Once we were able to present. All this statistical data to the, to the regulators and also to the passengers. Uh, we, we, we'll have a strong argument that it is a much safer technology. Of course, uh, magic is numbers is just one side. The other side is, is by convincing, by storytelling, and also by really putting more vehicles on the road. Providing a great service to the customers, I think, I think the, uh, a lot of cases our new customers actually come to our platform because the word of mouth. So I think, uh, uh, by building, uh, early adopters by building a really trusted cohort of users we'll be able to have that, that really, uh, uh, uh, snowball effect to have more and more people joining and trusting our services. You know, China's become really strong in this, in this space. I mean there's you, there, there are other kind of robotaxi startups, large companies getting involved too. Briefly, you know, why do you think China has shown itself to have kind of I I say surprising strength, maybe that's the wrong word, but, but, but why is China proved to be kind of surprisingly strong in this robotaxi space. Well, I think definitely there are several factors. One is, uh, the, uh, uh, government itself, uh, is very progressive. Say for example, in Pony's case, we were able to, uh, test and operate on the open roads, even, even 9 years ago, when, when the technology wasn't even as mature as what it is today. So that, Supportive regulation is definitely important. Second, of course, is because of the, uh, over the last 20-30 years, the whole ecosystem or the whole tech industry really accumulated a lot of the, uh, talents, components, a lot of the know-hows. So, so when we enter into the market, we were able to actually hire, uh, uh. Really strong candidate, uh, who's passionate and who's experienced. And, and also the whole ecosystem, right, when we need a lighter, when we need, uh, say, say a mechanical parts, we were able to find, uh, uh, uh, uh, around us. So, so I think all those, essentially it's, it's, it's like a whole system needs to be in place for this, especially for mobile taxi who's, I think, I think the key challenge is, it's such a complex system, it requires hardware, software talents. Regulation and everything else. I think uh China provides a good, uh, system to support this kind of innovation. Mhm. You know, I, I want to take the opportunity to ask kind of whether you've seen kind of customer behavior change after using robotaxis for a long time. I will tell you when I first rode in one, it was weird for about 5 minutes and then quickly became not weird. And in fact the ride was a lot smoother than than a human driven taxi, but you know there are, you know, people talk about oh people are hiring robo taxis to take phone calls. They're hiring them to, um, for kind of purposes that people maybe wouldn't have expected going as the sector was growing. So from your experience kind of as from running Pony AI, what are some kind of interesting customer behavior changes that you've seen as robotaxis start becoming more popular? Mm, I, I think certainly one thing we can see is the, the, the, the, there are certain big percentage of the customers become regular commuters, uh, once they, exactly as you described, the, uh, a lot of the new riders. Uh, 1st 5 minutes, they, they may be wandering around. They, they even take out their phones to take a video, but then after the first great experience, they, they start using the robotaxi as very regular. I think they're robotaxi compare with. Human driving taxi, they provide some unique experience, right? It's a private space. You feel a lot, uh, uh, safe, private, and, uh, also it's, it's consistent. I think that's an important part is you, you, as a if you get a human taxi, a human-driven taxi, you, you might get a good driver in one day, the next day might not be, right? So it's a consistent, it's always a clean environment. Uh, give, give you a specific example. For example, for, for the. For female riders at night, they feel a lot safer, uh, just because there's no driver. So, so it's, it's, uh, once it's at night, there's a lot, the, the female riders actually percentage is getting much higher. Um, uh, there, there's, uh, To just give you an example, but, but it's essentially, I think, uh, it will become a regular. I think the, the, the, uh, our riders are very diverse across different age groups, uh, different, uh, professions. So, so it's definitely not, not something, uh, unique just for the tech-savvy people to try. It becomes very, very, uh, general to the public. Well, as I said, I, I look forward to them being a lot more ubiquitous. Um, in the cities where I am. James, thank you so much for helping, for coming on the program today. We're very glad to have you. Yeah, thank you, thanks for having us and uh and uh who whoever goes, comes to our, our, the cities that we operate, definitely, definitely, uh, give it, give it a try. You can download Tony AI app. It's, it's through through App Store or you just use the WeChat, uh, mini program. You, you're gonna love it. All right.