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China AV - Aug. Newsletter
Alibaba invested at Xpeng just few weeks before the NYSE IPO that launched the valuation of the company with 62% increase at the first day of trading!! NIO presented performance way beyond expectation and all stock rise as Tesla breaks another record. China NEV are backed by the biggest tech firms in the country that also implement their AV systems in their champion NEV brand. Huawei enters the LiDAR sector trying to position its automotive BU as a competitive tier 1 and it will be interesting if they will be able to expend and supply to OEMs outside China. At last few days ago Volkswagen Group announced the first international AV service, which will join the existing local initiatives by Pony.ai, Baidu, WeRide and AutoX. Enjoy reading!
Aug.3rd: Xpeng Motors received USD 300 million funding led by Alibaba with participation from the Qatar InvestmentAuthority. All top tech firms at China – BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) have been investing regularly in EV firms. Alibaba has participated in investment in Xpeng Motors’ A+, B and B+ rounds. Tencent is the second-largest shareholder of NIO and Baiduhas been betting on WM Motor in multiple rounds. Some has cross investments but each one champion one NEV company and target to implement their OS and AV systems in those vehicles.
Aug.4th: Trunk (主线科技) and Fuyou Trucks (福佑卡车) established a joint venture in order to leverage their respective advantages in the frontier technology area of freight delivery. The two will accelerate the deep integration of autonomous driving systems, intelligent dispatching systems and will collaborate to implement autonomous driving technologies in the field of high-speed logistics
Aug.11th: NIO has generated a revenue of CNY 3.72 billion in the second quarter of 2020, up by more than CNY 2 billion compared to the same period last year. Car deliveries in the second quarter reached 10,331 units, compared with 3,553 in the same period last year. With excellent sales, NIO’s automobile gross profit margin and comprehensive gross profit margin were 9.7% and 8.4% respectively, which was the first time that it turned from negative to positive profit.
Aug.12th: Wang Jun, President of Huawei‘s intelligent automobile solutions business, stated at the 12th China Auto Blue-Book Forum that Huawei currently has an optoelectronic technology research center in Wuhan with more than 10,000 people. The center is currently committed to developing LiDAR technology, with a goal of developing 100-beam short range LiDAR, targeting to reduce the cost as low as $200 per unit and even $100 in the longer future.
Aug.17th: AutoX officially launched Robotaxi service for Shanghai users. Users can call AutoX Robotaxi through the Amap app in the designated autonomous driving demonstration area, and ride free of charge. Each vehicle will still have a safety driver to monitor the driving status of the vehicle at all times.
Aug.18th: Horizon Robotics has signed a strategic cooperation with the Intelligent Network Development Institute of China First Automobile, and the two sides will focus on ADAS, high-level autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit.
Aug.19th: DeepRoute and Cao-Cao Mobility, a strategic investment by Geely Group, jointly announced that the two companies are carrying out autonomous vehicles testing and operation cooperation. The goal of this partnership is to provide autonomous driving services during Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games.
Aug.20th: Letzgo (大众出行) and AutoX announced strategic cooperation, target to set up a large-scale fleet of autonomous driving demonstration application at Shanghai Jiading autonomous driving demonstration zone. Later the two plan to launch an autonomous driving travel platform scheme for Chinese market in which Letzgo will provide traffic access for the fleet and AutoX will provide a technical platform.
Aug.25th: Dongfeng will cooperate with AutoX and DeepRoute.ai to establish the largest autonomous driving fleet in Wuhan. According to the investment agreement, between 2020 to 2022, more than 200 autonomous driving vehicles will gradually enter operation.
Aug.26th: Baidu Apollo announced that it was approved for the second phase of unmanned AV testing at Beijing. Baidu plans to carry out AV demonstration operation on 700km autonomous driving test-road at multiple districts including: Yizhuang, Haidian and Shunyi. Beijing’s implementation rules for AV road test require the accumulated mileage of autopilot testing to exceed 500,000 kilometers, with at least 20 test vehicles. Since December 2019, Baidu completed 519,000 kilometers of road testing in Beijing with 50 test vehicles. Including fleets in other cities and overseas, Baidu has more than 150 autopilot road test licenses, the test fleet has reached 500 vehicles, and the total test mileage exceeds 6 million kilometers.
Aug.26th: Volkswagen Group announced that its pilot project for autonomous travel service was officially launched in Hefei, Anhui Province. Volkswagen Group will become the first international automobile manufacturing enterprise to start the construction of autonomous driving service ecosystem in China. At the same time, Hefei municipal government also issued the first autonomous driving vehicle test license to Volkswagen China.
Aug.28th: Baidu Apollo won the bid for “new infrastructure project of intelligent transportation oriented to autonomous driving and vehicle road coordination” in Huangpu District, Guangzhou. The project budget is estimated to nearly 460 million yuan. The targets of this project include the construction of road network infrastructure, intelligent intersection and internet of vehicles among other applications.
Sources: EqualOcean; Gasgoo; Tech163; Leiphone; 36kr; QQ;
