- Stav Shvartz
- March 5, 2020
- 6:35 pm
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China AV - Mar. Newsletter
March 2020 marks the global outbreak of coronavirus pandemic. Over a million people got infected to date, with cases at almost every country around the globe. Automakers have been asked to shift manufacturing resources from cars to ventilators in order to meet the growing demand for the life saving device. China managed to block the spread of COVID-19 and has now less than 2000 active cases, lockdown is released and businesses are back in full capacity including 3 Dongfeng Honda factories at Wuhan. Now China is supporting the world by supplying medical equipment to outbreak regions and local companies are willing to collaborate on innovative solutions to fight the spread of the virus. Crisis in Chinese is structure from the words: Danger and Opportunity, you are welcome to read the full details of AV opportunities leveraged last month at March newsletter and share your own innovative ideas at the comments. Wish you all keep safe during this hectic period and please don’t forget that quarantine protects your love ones and elders around you. #StayHome
Mar.2nd: Beijing government released the official road test report of autonomous driving vehicles for 2019, the only official AV road test report in China. The report is listing Baidu Apollo as the enterprise with the largest number of test vehicles and the longest test mileage, with 52 test vehicles and 754,000km of new test mileage.
Mar.5th: Vipioneers.ai (慧拓无限), an autonomous mining solution provider, completed round A2 financing of over RMB 100 million, led by Kaihui fund. This equity will be used for building an overall solution of unmanned mining including product, platform and system. Vipioneers promote a landing use case of underground coal mining and promoting the mass production and delivery of unmanned equipment at mines.
Mar.5th: SAIC GM Wuling announced that it selected Baojun new energy car as an autonomous transportation carrier and started to build an unmanned logistics line based at the plant area of Baojun. The AV logistics line is jointly built by SAIC GM Wuling and UISEE (驭势科技), a leading VDS provider, specifically composed of unmanned vehicles and cloud based operation management system. In 5 month, SAIC GM Wuling unmanned logistics vehicle has driven more than 10000 kilometers and transported more than 6000 deliveries.
As for the global coronavirus pandemic, the platform was modified to a mobile temperature measuring vehicle and disinfection. The vehicle can spray and disinfect a 2-meters radios around it, with zero human interaction needed.
Mar.9th: The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the recommended national standard for “Automotive Driving Automation Classification“, which will be implemented on January 1st, 2021. This standard is based on the level an AV system can perform dynamic driving tasks. It divides autonomous driving into the globally accepted levels 0 to 5, based on performance ability of dynamic driving tasks and the presence or absence of design operating conditions.
Mar.10th: Changan auto released L3 autonomous driving system, which will be equipped on all new UNI-T model release. Changan President, Zhu Huarong, personally piloted the new system, driving 23km and broadcasting online the event.
Mar. 11th: Neolix has raised nearly RMB 200 million ($28.7 million) in Series A+ funding, targeting mass production of its self-driving vehicles. This round of funding is led by electric vehicle maker and existing investor Lixiang, which is now Neolix’s second-largest shareholder after its CEO, Yu Enyuan.
Mar.17th: Baidu has won a bid to build public road infrastructure for self-driving cars at Chongqing municipality, in a total budget of $7.5 million. Baidu will provide a package of solutions including cloud data centers for vehicle-infrastructure communication and car management, enabling L4 autonomous vehicles to test on a 20 square kilometer area of public roads. Baidu is expanding from developing autonomous vehicle technology to offering cloud-based transport infrastructure for car connectivity amid rising 5G adoption in China.
Mar.18th: Toyota has partnered with Momenta to joint develop a high definition (HD) mapping platform in China for autonomous driving vehicles. Momenta will provide its camera-based HD mapping technologies to help commercialize Toyota’s AMP in China.
Mar.19th: Alibaba Damo Academy announced a wining proposal for CVPR 2020. In this proposal, a high-performance autonomous driving detector is used, which can calculate accuracy and speed of 3D objects and therefore enhance the safety performance of the autonomous driving system.
Mar.23rd: SoftBank is close to finalize a deal to lead a $300 million investment in DiDi’s autonomous driving unit. Analysts assess that in Softbank’s vision, the future traffic should be composed of electric vehicle, autonomous driving and vehicle scheduling.
Mar.23rd: Baidu won the bid for the integration project of design of Hefei 5G demonstration operation line, including procurement and construction. The tech giant will build the first large-scale 5G vehicle-road collaborative demonstration line in the region.
Mar.24th: Baidu Apollo continue its infrastructure expenditure, this time wining the bid for Shanxi project to build an autonomous driving vehicle-road collaborative demonstration area at an urban road section. The project will carry out vehicle-road collaboration planning and construction in Yangquan to support AV technology verification, test evaluation and operation services.
Mar.26th: Self-driving truck start-up, TuSimple, is partnering with automotive tier 1 supplier ZF to develop and produce autonomous vehicle sensors on a commercial scale. The two companies will co-develop cameras, LiDAR, radar and a central computer. As part of the partnership, ZF will contribute engineering support to validate and integrate TuSimple’s autonomous system into the vehicle.
Sources: Gasgoo; 36kr; Robotics and Automation News; The latest breaking news; MIIT.gov; TechNode; PanDaily; Reuters; The Information; TechCrunch
