China’s automakers have teamed up with software companies to go global with their driverless cars, which are poised to claim a big share of a growing market as Western manufacturers are still preparing to compete.

中国的汽车制造商正联手软件公司，推动其无人驾驶汽车进军全球市场。在西方制造商尚未形成竞争态势之际，中国的自动驾驶汽车已准备好在这个不断增长的市场中占据重要份额。

The industry in China is expanding despite tariffs imposed last year by the European Union on electric cars, and despite some worries in Europe about the security implications of relying on Chinese suppliers.

尽管欧盟去年对中国电动汽车加征了关税，且欧洲对依赖中国供应商可能带来的安全问题存在一些担忧，但它的自动驾驶产业仍在扩张中。

Baidu, one of China’s biggest software companies, said on Monday that it would supply Lyft, an American ride-hailing service, with self-driving cars assembled by Jiangling Motors of China. Lyft is expected to begin operating them next year in Germany and Britain, subject to regulatory approval, the companies said.

中国最大的软件公司之一百度周一表示，将为美国网约车服务公司Lyft提供由中国江铃汽车组装的自动驾驶汽车。两家公司称，Lyft计划在获得监管批准后，于明年在德国和英国开始运营这些车辆。

The announcement comes three months after Uber and Momenta, a Chinese autonomous driving company, announced their own plans to begin offering self-driving cars in an unspecified European city early next year. Momenta will soon provide assisted driving technology to the Chinese company IM Motors for its cars sold in Britain.

在此三个月前，优步与中国自动驾驶公司Momenta宣布，计划明年初在欧洲某个未指明的城市推出自动驾驶汽车服务。Momenta即将为中国智己汽车提供辅助驾驶技术，用于其在英国销售的汽车。

While Momenta has not specified the model that Uber will be using, it has already signaled it will choose a Chinese model. In China, “the pace of development and the pressure to deliver at scale push companies to improve quickly,” said Gerhard Steiger, the chairman of Momenta Europe.

虽然Momenta尚未明确优步将使用的车型，但已暗示会选择一款中国车型。Momenta欧洲区董事长格哈德·斯泰格表示，在中国，“发展的速度和大规模交付的压力推动着企业快速改进”。

China’s state-controlled banking system has been lending money at low interest rates to the country’s electric car industry in a bid for global leadership.

在中国电动汽车行业争夺全球领导地位的过程中，由国家主导的银行体系一直以低利率向该行业提供贷款。

南昌江铃汽车工厂的一名工人正在电动汽车装配线上工作。该工厂将为百度和Lyft生产RT6车型，供其在欧洲使用。摄于去年。

Chinese driverless cars are starting to move into other markets as well. Baidu and Uber announced last month that they would start offering their self-driving cars this year in Asia outside China and in the Middle East.

中国的无人驾驶汽车也开始进入其他市场。百度和Uber上月宣布，今年将在除中国以外的亚洲地区和中东推出其自动驾驶汽车服务。

Automakers in China have not yet tried to offer driverless cars in the United States. That is partly because of concerns about the high costs of personal injury lawsuits and the 100 percent tariffs imposed last year on electric cars imported from China. In addition, the United States, citing security, severely limited in January the use of Chinese assisted-driving systems.

中国的汽车制造商尚未尝试在美国推出无人驾驶汽车。部分原因是担心人身伤害诉讼的高昂成本，以及去年对从中国进口的电动汽车征收的100%关税。此外，美国以安全为由，在1月严格限制了中国辅助驾驶系统的使用。

For navigation, the cars use cameras that take dozens of high-resolution images per second of the road and roadside areas. Automakers and software companies have said that very little information from these photos is uploaded or stored. But collection of the data has raised concerns among U.S. policymakers and companies. China also has stringent restrictions on driving-related data.

这些汽车在导航时会使用摄像头每秒拍摄数十张道路及路边区域的高分辨率图像。汽车制造商和软件公司表示，这些照片中的信息很少会被上传或存储。但数据收集引发了美国政策制定者和企业的担忧。中国对驾驶相关数据同样实施严格管控。

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, began offering driverless cars in Austin, Texas, in June. Waymo, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, also has driverless cars in Austin as well as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Atlanta. In Europe, Volkswagen has said it is developing a driverless version of its electric ID. Buzz minivan.

特斯拉首席执行官埃隆·马斯克6月开始在得克萨斯州奥斯汀推出无人驾驶汽车。Waymo（前身为谷歌自动驾驶汽车项目）在奥斯汀以及洛杉矶、旧金山、菲尼克斯和亚特兰大也有无人驾驶汽车在运营。在欧洲，大众表示正在研发电动ID. Buzz小型货车的无人驾驶版本。

But automakers outside China face very high costs for radars, cameras and other technology required for so-called robot taxis. The price of the electric cars themselves is also higher. An ID. Buzz, without self-driving gear, retails for $62,000 to $72,000. The somewhat smaller Jiangling RT6 is less than $30,000.

但中国以外的汽车制造商在所谓“机器人出租车”所需的雷达、摄像头和其他技术方面面临着高昂的成本。电动汽车本身的价格也更高。不含自动驾驶设备的ID. Buzz零售价为6.2万至7.2万美元，而体积稍小一些的江铃RT6售价不到3万美元。

Self-driving car experiments are already underway in more than a dozen Chinese cities and are being conducted by at least 19 automakers. Last year, Baidu turned its experiment in Wuhan, a city in central China, into the world’s largest.

中国已有十几个城市开展了无人驾驶汽车试验，至少有19家车企参与其中。去年，百度将其在中国中部城市武汉的试验项目打造成了全球规模最大的无人驾驶汽车试验。

武汉街头车流中的一辆百度无人驾驶出租车，摄于去年。

The Chinese government has backed the technology. The government sets demands on the safety of driverless technology and has used censorship to suppress online discussion of crashes and other safety incidents. And China’s legal system makes it difficult to win large verdicts from car manufacturers.

中国政府对这项技术给予了支持。政府对无人驾驶技术的安全性提出要求，并通过审查来压制网上关于事故及其他安全事件的讨论。同时，中国的司法体系也使得消费者很难从汽车制造商那里获得高额赔偿。

As a result, Chinese companies are accumulating databases of real-world driving they can use to train their autonomous driving models. Momenta and Baidu trained their driverless car systems in China

因此，中国企业正在积累现实世界驾驶数据库，用于训练自动驾驶模型。Momenta和百度均在中国训练其无人驾驶汽车系统。

In the United States, personal injury lawyers have begun focusing on the industry.

在美国，人身伤害律师已开始关注这个行业。

On Friday, a jury in Florida found that flaws in Tesla’s self-driving software bore one-third of the responsibility for a crash in 2019 that killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured her boyfriend. The jury verdict, if upheld on appeal, would require Tesla to pay as much as $243 million in punitive and compensatory damages to the woman’s parents and to her boyfriend.

周五，佛罗里达州的一个陪审团裁定，特斯拉自动驾驶软件的缺陷对2019年的一起车祸负有三分之一的责任。这起车祸导致一名22岁女性死亡，其男友受重伤。如果上诉后维持原判，特斯拉需向该女子的父母及其男友支付高达2.43亿美元的惩罚性赔偿和补偿性赔偿。

Driverless technology works better with electric cars than with gasoline-powered cars. This is because computers can vary the power going to the wheels in an electric car extremely quickly. China is the world’s main producer of electric cars.

无人驾驶技术在电动车上的表现优于燃油车。这是因为电动车的计算机系统能够极快地调节传至车轮的动力。中国是全球主要的电动汽车生产国。

Expanding robotaxi services to new cities, not to mention new countries, is not easy. While the individual cars do not have drivers, they typically require one controller for every several cars to handle difficulties and answer questions from users. And the cars often need to be specially programmed for traffic conditions unique to each city.

将机器人出租车服务扩展到新的城市并非易事，更不用说新的国家。虽然这些车辆都没有司机，但通常每数辆汽车就需要一名操作员来处理突发问题并解答用户疑问。而且这些车辆往往需要针对每个城市特有的交通状况进行专门编程。

Lyft and Baidu nonetheless said that they had plans for “the fleet scaling to thousands of vehicles across Europe in the following years.”

尽管如此，Lyft和百度表示，他们计划“在未来数年将车队规模扩至数千辆，覆盖欧洲多国”。