With the robot taxi through Hamburg

Autonomous vehicles have fascinated film-makers for decades. In the science fiction film Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger sat in the autonomous Johnny Cab on Mars. In the film Blade Runner, Harrison Ford used flying cars called spinners. What seemed futuristic back then is increasingly becoming reality today.

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A look at China shows how far the technology has already come: In the Yizhuang district of the capital Beijing, #robot taxis have recently started driving through the streets. Citizens call the vehicles with an app, open the back door with a code and start the journey with a pin received by text message - all without a driver on board.

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Although the robot taxis are not as spectacular as their film counterparts, they are well received by China's tech-savvy population. One reason for this is the price: a journey of around eight kilometres costs the equivalent of 1.40 Euros, significantly cheaper than conventional taxis.

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The roll-out is therefore on the programme in China. More than 30 cities have now issued test licences for autonomous driving. There are political and economic reasons for this ambitious initiative. China's government sees the automotive industry as a strategic lever for gaining global influence and diversifying its own economy.

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Will we in Germany soon be able to get into an autonomous taxi like Arnold Schwarzenegger? In Hamburg, Volkswagen and the software company Mobileye are currently testing autonomous driving with converted ID Buzz electric buses. Customers should be able to take their first test drives in the Hanseatic city this year.

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However, compared to China, the pace of development is rather leisurely, some experts criticise. The reason for this is that Germany played a key role in the development of autonomous driving back in the 1980s. However, unlike China and the USA, the industry has pursued an evolutionary approach, focussing on the further development of existing driver assistance systems.

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In addition, companies in Germany are often held back by complex authorisation procedures, which are more conservative and fragmented compared to China. While China, for example, approves entire cities for the testing of robot taxis, European projects are limited to specific zones or individual test routes.

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It is therefore not surprising that the number of companies aiming for fully automated operation is greater in China and the USA and that companies are making faster progress. Waymo in San Francisco and Phoenix also already have autonomous taxis in operation.

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However, the Chinese are also still working on the supreme discipline of autonomous driving: the previously unattained Level5, where vehicles can drive autonomously in any environment. The current robot taxis cannot achieve this. They work at Level 4, are trained to drive in mapped areas of the city and city-specific traffic situations, meaning they cannot spontaneously drive to another city or to the countryside. Such flexibility is currently not technically feasible.

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Some experts even doubt that Level 5 can ever be achieved, as current AI systems are designed for specific tasks and cannot cover all possible driving situations. However, this level may not even be necessary. After all, Level 4 is perfectly adequate for many practical applications with autonomous shuttles and logistics vehicles. And this is where Germany is staying on the ball.

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By the way, there is another difference between China and Germany. Some studies show that the German population is more sceptical about autonomous driving technology than the Chinese. What about you? Would you take a robot taxi to work?