- Stav Shvartz
- May 2, 2020
- 8:24 pm
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China AV - May Newsletter
We are starting an era of “New Normal” under COVID19 China is back to full operation and the autonomous sector is boosting to support the deployment of “social distancing” when it’s not required. This trend accelerates ‘old’ trends as the booming of e-commerce and the growing demand for transportation moving both people and goods. Moreover, people prefer avoiding mass transport and the demand for automotive is growing. After a sharp decrease in sales during Feb. through April, we have seen growth of 6.5% in new car sales during May 2020 (compared to the same period at 2019). The quick recovery of the automotive market as well as the need for autonomous solutions bring multiple opportunities and the continuous growth of main players. As an evidence, DiDi Autonomous division raised $500M from SoftBank! The most significant amount in one round among AV startups.
May.6th: China FAW signed a shareholder agreement with Zhonghuan satellite, a holding subsidiary of NavInfo, the biggest mapping company at China. The two will jointly invest in the establishment of “yukuaichuangling Intelligent Technology (Nanjing)” to carry out commercial applications of vehicle network and develop the market beyond commercial vehicles.
May.8th : Guangzhou development zone and Baidu signed a strategic cooperation agreement, binding the two sides commitment to cooperate in multiple areas including autonomous driving and intelligent transportation. Baidu Apollo will deeply participate in the construction of Guangzhou development zone’s intelligent networking pilot area, and help the development zone to build a world-class industrial cluster of artificial intelligence.
May.8th: Tiamaes technology (天迈科技) and Haylion technology (海梁科技) officially joined Baidu Apollo intelligent transportation ecosystem. The two corporates will use their own technologies and expertise in the areas of autonomous driving and vehicle road coordination, in order to accelerate the deployment of intelligent public transport applications based on Apollo “ACE traffic engine”.
May.8th: Ali Damo won first place in the “single frame 3D point cloud semantic segmentation” ranking by Semantic KITTI, the authoritative data set of autonomous driving. After Ali Damo applied its algorithm to the unmanned logistics vehicle, it greatly improved the AV perception ability and enabled the vehicle to recognize “centimeter level” obstacles.
May.11th: The first customized platform for unmanned port container truck passed production and operation test. The platform was jointly developed by Dongfeng, COSCO Shipping Ports and China Mobile, composed of only “chassis + sensor”. Construction of 5G + smart port has completed the leap from the experimental research to the pilot production and commercial stage. Through multi-sensor fusion schemes including LiDAR, camera and GPS, no human control is required, and the truck can independently analyze the complex port environment and highly dynamic scenes, and respond accordingly.
May.14th : Smart driving startup Novauto (超星未来) announced that it completed Series A financing, led by Evergrande, raising tens of millions of RMB. This round of financing will be used for R&D in order to build a “high-performance intelligent driving control platform” via the integration of software and hardware, and accelerating landing applications in high-level autonomous driving scenarios.
May.14th: GoHigh (大唐高鸿) and Enjoyor (银江股份) officially joined Baidu Apollo Intelligent Transportation Ecosystem. GoHigh is focused on vehicle to infrastructure communication, and develops C-V2X with China’s independent IP rights. Enjoyor is leading Hangzhou’s urban transportation brain.
May.15th: The unveiling ceremony of Apollo AV-Road collaboration application lab and the Autonomous Driving Innovation Application Operation Center was held in Cangzhou. The scope of the Cangzhou Intelligent Connected Test Zone will go beyond the economic development zone to the main urban area of Cangzhou City, and will make it the first city in China to open an intelligent connected vehicle test on municipal roads in the main urban area.
May.18th: Huawei announced that its autonomous driving operating system kernel (including perception modules) has obtained the highest level of functional safety certification (ISO 26262 ASIL-D), and kernel is also the first operating system in China to obtain ASIL-D certification. Huawei’s autonomous driving operating system became the industry’s first commercial OS kernel with dual high security and safety certification.
May.18th : Pony.ai has obtained licenses to test autonomous vehicles carrying passengers on Beijing’s roads in designated areas. The company will carry out manned road tests on public roads in Haidian, Yizhuang and other districts in Beijing, which will be another important step in the development of productization and commercialization for the company and the autonomous driving industry in general.
May.20th: Baidu Apollo driverless mining truck project for Yimin open-pit was broadcast live via 5G. This is the first domestic 172-ton mining truck wire-controlled transformation, and the two 172-ton mining trucks have been modified from human operation to signal control.
May.21st: During China’s ‘two sessions’ 2020, Baidu Chairman Li Yanhong, as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, submitted four proposals involving new infrastructure, intelligent transportation, support for continuing education and protection of personal information. In terms of transportation, Li Yanhong submitted a proposal to speed up the construction of intelligent transportation infrastructure.
May.27th: iDriverPlus Technology completed round C financing, led by the HOPU-Arm Innovation Fund. The startup raised tens of millions US dollars, though the exact amount wasn’t disclosed. The equity will be used for technology development and commercialization of the startup urban robotic vehicles.
May.28th : SemiDrive (芯驰科技) officially released the 9th series of three automotive chip products, X9, V9 and G9, providing a collaborative and integrated solution for automobiles. The chips cover three core applications including intelligent cockpit, intelligent driving and central gateway. V9 series chips are targeted to be the core brain for autonomous driving – as a core domain controller, the V9 has a built-in high-performance vision engine that supports up to 18 camera inputs, which cannot only meet the needs of ADAS applications, but also leave ample room for high level autonomous driving.
May.29th: DiDi raised over $500 million in funding for its autonomous driving division, in a round that was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. This is the first external financing since the establishment of DiDi autonomous driving company, and it is also the largest single financing obtained by domestic autonomous driving companies. The investment will be used to fund R&D and accelerate the launch of Robo-Taxi services at China and abroad.
Sources: Gasgoo; Tiamaes; Haylion; 36kr; Chinapev; EqualOcean; XinhuaNet; Bitauto; DealStreetAsia; CNBC;
