This Chinese Autonomous Car Start-Up Is About to Go Public in the U.S.

The future of self-driving cars is still a huge question mark, but one Chinese company dealing in the tech is hoping to get U.S. support for its business.

WeRide, the Guangzhou-based entity that makes software to power driverless vehicles, could go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange as early as this week, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The company was founded in 2017 by Tony Xu Han, and it currently has a robotaxi pilot program in China and the United Arab Emirates, plus it allows automakers to use its self-driving software.

It’s unclear how easily WeRide will slot into the American market, though. “The degree of difficulty in doing this in the U.S. is substantial today given the regulatory scrutiny that some of the Chinese offerings have been facing,” Josh Lerner, a professor at Harvard Business School, told the Times.

As it stands, the relationship between China and the United States isn’t a completely friendly one, especially when it comes to autonomous-driving tech. President Joe Biden may soon propose a ban on such software from China that sits at or above “conditional automation,” The New York Times reported. That’s when a car drives itself, but a person remains behind the wheel in case human intervention is needed. Currently, WeRide is authorized by the state of California to test cars without a safety driver, but it’s only done so over about 50 miles. It’s also been approved to drive passengers in autonomous cars around San Jose, but it can’t yet give rides to the general public.

Perhaps the most well known competitor in the United States is Waymo, which is owned by the Google parent company Alphabet. Last year, Waymo cars drove millions of miles in California, while WeRide’s 14 cars hit just 40,000 miles, according to the Times. And while self-driving capabilities are being embraced by some automakers—such as Rimac and Lotus—others haven’t had much success with the tech: Apple canceled its self-driving electric-car project earlier this year, and the CEO of Ferrari said last year that the Prancing Horse would never make autonomous cars.

For its part, WeRide will soon discover what the appetite is for self-driving cars in the U.S. But depending on the country’s relationship with China, it may take more than just hungry investors for the company to make real inroads in the American market.