Five minutes after being ordered on an app, a taxi arrives outside a small McDonald’s on the edge of Shanghai. There is no welcome from a driver, because there is no driver. After entering a pin code into a panel on the rear door and jumping into the back seat, a disembodied voice from a speaker gives an instruction to put on seatbelts. The car then indicates and swings itself into the slipstream of traffic.

This could be a scene from a science-fiction film, but it has become reality in 20 cities across China, where pilot trials of these robotaxis are currently being run in geofenced areas, including in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Beijing. The US is the only other country to operate similar large-scale schemes.

A September report by HSBC says the robotaxis are working smoothly in many of the Chinese cities. Cheaper sensors, more processing power and bigger datasets are improving algorithms. This, coupled with continued regulatory support, is helping to build scale.