China’s self-driving truck leaders say AI breakthroughs won’t accelerate rollout — here’s why

chinese self-driving truck companies say the recent ai breakthroughs won't speed up their rollout. pony.ai ceo james peng told reporters last week that large language models like claude and deepseek have "zero relevance" to autonomous driving. "the world's best linguistics expert doesn't mean he's a good driver," he said. inceptio is sticking to its mid-2028 commercialization target. ceo julian ma expects the company will have 5 billion kilometers of truck driving data by the third or fourth quarter of 2028 — enough to let fully autonomous heavy-duty trucks run on public roads without humans inside, in certain parts of the country. he said achieving that in about two years is already quite fast. inceptio had driven 700 million kilometers as of late april, aiming for 1 billion by year-end. the company leads the industry in commercial autonomous truck miles, far ahead of u.s. rivals. but ma noted that widespread driverless trucks will also need manufacturer partnerships and regulatory approval. chinese authorities have suspended new autonomous driving licenses after baidu's robotaxis caused collisions in wuhan.