Asia Tech Wire (Nov 14) -- Tony Han, founder of Chinese self-driving startup WeRide, said the difficulty in commercializing robotaxi today is policy.

On how long it will take to commercialize robotaxi, Han said in an interview on Thursday, "It's now, and we're pushing hard."

"At the moment, the number of [robotaxi] deployments is not the most important thing, what's important is the policy guarantee," Han said.

He added, "With the policy, with WeRide's financial strength and other aspects of accumulation, it can expand rapidly."

Regarding the difficulty of commercial profitability, Han said, "If you had asked me three years ago, I think the difficulty was the stability and reliability of the technology, today the difficulty is the policy."

"How to make a formerly manned vehicle, now purely driverless, legally compliant to operate in a city and across a region, requires policymakers and companies to work together to solve the problem," he noted.

Founded in 2017, WeRide formally went public on Nasdaq at the end of October under the ticker symbol "WRD", becoming the world's first robotaxi stock.