TrunkTech

China AV - Nov. Newsletter

Since the beginning of November, I’m back at China, meeting the best companies in the AutoTech sector and industry leaders that push their teams to not only present Autonomous-Tech but also commercialize it! I feel fortunate to be back at this amazing country and speed up again “China pace” which is incredibly FAST! Last month 4 Chinese autonomous truck companies raised over USD 3 billion!! This position China at world dominance position in the sector.

I’d like to share few words regarding the pandemic situation that is disturbing all of us globally and some have doubts regarding the situation in China (a separate post will follow). China won Covid, achieving it by individual discipline, digital services and well gov. management. Doesn’t matter where you come from to China you have to do 2 covid test before the flight and 14 days quarantine in gov. hotel with additional 2 covid tests during these 2 weeks. In public transport all are wearing masks as well as any service provider, even that there were no new cases in the city for 6 months! Your phone track where you went if you have been exposed to anyone sick and you have to present the green code entering any hotel/ company/ conference ext. Until we have a vaccine it could have been amazing if our leaders and individuals could adopt some of the proven system China have developed to allow normal life within the country. All business is back to normal, universities, schools and offline shopping. OEMs and Autonomous Driving companies are moving ahead at full speed and the opportunities are endless. Hopefully we can learn from each other and work together to fight this pandemic, while stimulating the AutoTech sector and collaboration between local and global companies. Feel free to comment or reach out directly if you want to share ideas on this topic.

Nov.2nd: TrunkTech announced to deliver 13 autonomous driving trucks to Ningbo Zhoushan port, and officially started multi-vehicle fleet operation in the port. This batch delivery is another large-scale delivery project of TrunkTech after the commercial order of 25 autonomous driving trucks in Tianjin port, and its port autonomous driving commercial scale has placed it as the current world leader in the segment.

TrunkTech 1

Nov.6th: Pony.ai has announced that it has obtained $267 million in round C financing led by the Teachers’ Innovation Platform, TIP of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan,OTPP. After this round of investment, the total financing amount of Pony.ai is more than USD 1 billion and the post investment valuation is USD 5.3 billion.

Pony.ai

Nov.7th: TUVRheinland China hold a strategic cooperation signing ceremony with Neolix at the China International Import Expo. Both sides will establish long-term business cooperation and mutually beneficial relationship in the fields of autonomous driving and IoV related products and services. The two sides jointly released the first stage certification results of L4 class unmanned vehicle in China applying for German exemption certification.

TUVRheinland and Neolix

Nov.9th Inceptio technology announced that it had completed a new round of equity financing of US $120 million, which was led by Ningde times. Through this round of financing, Inceptio technology will accelerate the process of mass production and commercial operation of L3 autonomous driving heavy trucks, in order to achieve its goal of mass production of L3 by the end of 2021.

Nov.10th: DiDi autonomous driving has launched a new generation of L4 autonomous driving vehicle with BAIC Group. It has debuted at the WICV 2020 for the first time and provides trial ride experience. It is reported that the vehicle is based on beijing-eu7, which is jointly developed by BAIC Group and Didi. The vehicle is equipped with internal developed autonomous driving software.

Nov.12th: Xpeng Motors released the third quarter financial data of 2020 (without audit). The gross profit rate of Xpeng in the third quarter was 4.6%, realizing the first positive change of gross profit rate. Meanwhile, as of September 30, 2020, the company has a total cash flow of RMB 20 billion (USD 3 billion). He Xiaopeng, chairman and CEO of Xpeng Motors, said: “as the first quarterly report after the listing of Xpeng Motors, we have achieved strong operation and financial performance, which is mainly due to the rapid increase of P7 delivery volume.”

Xpeng

Nov.16th: BYD and DiDi unveil D1 electric car made exclusively for ride-hailing. D1, the 4390mm long, five-seater that uses a 136bhp e-motor and Li-ion battery from Chongqing Fudi are set to be sold exclusively to DiDi registered operators. DiDi used data gathered from its 550 million passengers and 31 million drivers to design the D1.

Photo Credit: @GregKable Twitter

Nov.17th: Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company announced a strategic partnership with TuSimple to supply tire and tire management solutions for TuSimple’s future autonomous driving freight network (AFN). As part of the collaboration, Goodyear will provide products and maintenance services to improve the safety and operation of autonomous driving trucks.

Nov.18th: Plus.ai announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with BlackBerry. In the future, it will deploy and use BlackBerry® QNX® technology worldwide to promote the R&D and commercial application of autonomous driving heavy truck system. As the first autonomous driving heavy truck R&D enterprise applying BlackBerry QNX operating system, the new generation of mass production products developed by Plus.ai will be launched in 2021. In the next two years, Plus.ai plan to deploy thousands of autonomous driving heavy trucks in the United States.

Plus.ai is completing a new round of financing of US $100 million. At present, the account has reached US $60 million. The investors include Guotai Junan international and Hedosophia. This is another financing of more than 100 million US dollars in the field of autonomous driving heavy truck after Inceptio technology announced on November 9 that it has obtained $120 million financing from Ningde times leading investment.

Nov.24th: Manbang Group completes a new round of financing of USD 1.7 billion jointly led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital Pumi, and Fidelity. The massive funds raised will be invested in technological, service and model innovation. Manbang, the largest Chinese truck logistics unicorn, is a merged company that provides truck-hailing services across the country.

Nov.25th: Tusimple raised $350 million in E round financing that ended this month, at least $50 million more than its original target. The investors of this round of financing are Navistar, Traton, and VectoIQ.

TuSimple Round E

Nov.25th: WeRide and Transportation Research Institute of Tsinghua University jointly released China’s first Robotaxi passenger survey report, which released the report card of WeRide’s Robotaxi one-year operation. The report shows that WeRide Robotaxi have completed 147,128 trips, serving more than 60,000 different passengers.

Nov.26th: Jingwei Hirain, a technology service provider of automotive electronic system, announced the completion of a new round of financing. After the completion of this round of financing, Jingwei Hirain will further increase the R&D investment in intelligent driving, intelligent Internet connection, new energy, intelligent cockpit, unmanned driving operation and maintenance in closed scenes, continuously expand the customer group, and improve the product quality and service quality.

Nov.30th: NAVINFO announced that the company’s 4 billion yuan fixed increase plan was approved by the CSRC. After deducting the issue expenses, the fund-raising amount will be used for “intelligent Internet connected vehicle chip R&D project”, “autonomous driving map update and application development project”, “autonomous driving exclusive cloud platform project” and supplementary working capital.

Sources: Gasgoo; Qbtai; Leiphone; Tech163; Carscoops; EqualOcean

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