- Stav Shvartz
- February 4, 2021
- 2:17 pm
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China AV - Jan. Newsletter
2021 begun with the dominance of tech companies providing VDS (Virtual Driving System). WeRide, Trunk, CIDI, Baidu and Tencent announced multiple collaborations and execution of their AV services. Baidu even received a license to test in US without a safety driver. Meanwhile few OEMs are trying to develop their in-house capabilities, dominated by the new EV companies as NIO and WM motors.
Jan.1st: Xpeng Motors officially announced that it has reached a cooperation with LIVOX, which is incubated by DJI. Xpeng Motors will use its customized LiDAR produced by LIVOX on the new mass-production model for 2021. LIVOX has officially become the first partner of Xpeng Motors in the field of LiDAR. The Xpeng new model, equipped with LiDAR in 2021, will be the world’s first mass-production intelligent car equipped with LiDAR.
Jan.7th: The Shanghai Stock Exchange disclosed the prospectus (declaration draft) of HESAI (禾赛科技). It is reported that the number of shares to be issued by HESAI this time is no more than 63.6 million, with a par value of 1 yuan per share. A total of RMB 2 billion will be raised to build an intelligent manufacturing center and promote the R&D of LiDAR core chips and algorithms.
Jan.7th: Horizon Robotics announced that it completed a C2 round of funding, raising $400 million. The round was jointly led by Baillie Gifford, Yunfeng fund, CPE and Ningde times. So far, Horizon plan’s of $700 million round C financing, has completed $550 million.
Jan.9th: Fengxian intelligent driving full travel chain innovation demonstration zone jointly built by Fengxian government, Lingang group and Shanghai Jiaotong University officially opened. On the first day of the park’s opening, Fengxian demonstration zone attracted more than 30 well-known automobile enterprises, domestic and foreign standardization organizations and certification bodies, including SAIC GM, Ford, Xiamen Jinlong, WM Motor, etc. Baidu Apollo signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Fengxian District People’s government and Lingang group. In the future, more than 30 smart networking related projects, such as space 8, have settled in a centralized way, with a total investment of more than RMB 20 billion, an output value of RMB 30-50 billion, and a fiscal revenue of more than RMB 3-5 billion.
Jan.9th: NIO‘s first autonomous driving model, the intelligent electric flagship car ET7, was officially released, with the starting price of RMB 448,000 before subsidies. ET7 is equipped with the latest NAD (NIO autonomous driving) technology. Based on NIO Aquila ultra-sensing system and NIO Adam ultra-computing platform, ET7 target to gradually deploy a point-to-point autonomous driving experience in multiple scenarios including, highway, urban and parking.
Jan.11st: Baidu announced that it would form a joint venture with Geely to enter the automobile industry as an OEM. Baidu automobile company is independent of its parent company and maintains its independent operation. By using this structure, Baidu fully empowers the automobile company with core technologies such as artificial intelligence, Apollo autonomous driving, and Baidu map to support its rapid growth.
Jan.12th: China’s first autonomous driving challenge in snow and ice was held in Changchun. The event was divided into three parts: minibus round the pool performance race, urban ice and snow Challenge Race and cross-country ice and snow rally race, bringing together 31 teams from home and abroad. Qianxun provides high-precision positioning service and technical guidance for more than ten teams and helps to realize L4 autonomous driving in ice and snow cold climate.
Jan.14th: WeRide announced the completion of B2 and B3 rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of US $310 million in round B. Yutong Group is the strategic leading investor in this round of financing. Meanwhile, WeRide announced that it has started round C financing. In the future, based on the strong support of Yutong and other investors, WeRide said that it will continue to fully promote the implementation of totally driverless taxi, totally driverless minibus, and other travel modes, help the unmanned transformation of urban transportation and transportation system and enable intelligent travel services.
Jan.18th: CIDI, Changsha Intelligent Driving Institute, announced the completion of round B financing, which was led by Xinding capital, with the financing amount exceeding RMB 400 million in 2020. CIDI has a professional R&D Center for intelligent vehicles and an intelligent driving test area with the most complex scenes in China.
Jan.19th: Geely announced that it has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Tencent in Hangzhou. According to the agreement, the two sides will carry out all-round strategic cooperation in the fields of intelligent cockpit, autonomous driving, digital marketing, digital base, digital new business and low-carbon development.
Jan.19th: TRUNK announced strategic cooperation with Velodyne. The two sides will jointly promote the production of the new generation of autonomous driving trucks and accelerate the commercialization of autonomous driving trucks in China’s logistics trunk market.
Jan.27th: WeRide officially launched the Mini Robobus in Guangzhou International Biological Island, announced the launch of testing in which it provide the public a full booking and AV ride experience. At the event site, Guangzhou Public Transport Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement with WeRide, announcing that they will jointly carry out research and cooperation on innovative operation mode of autonomous driving public transport, as well as bringing convenient and high-quality intelligent public transport travel services to the public in the near future.
Jan.28th: DMV authorizes Baidu to test driverless vehicles in Sunnyvale without a safety driver. Baidu is the sixth company to obtain the license for all driverless vehicle testing, which was previously granted to Curise, Waymo, Nuro, Zoox and AutoX.
Jan.28th: DiDi Autonomous Driving (spinout of DiDi) has completed US $300 million financing recently, and this round is led by IDG capital. In addition to the over US $500 million financing of Softbank vision fund phase 2, which was publicly disclosed in May 2020, the company has obtained over US $800 million investment in one year. DiDi Autonomous Driving has already launched a new round of financing preparing for the year of the Ox.
Sources: Livoxtech; Gasgoo; NIOnews; ChinaNews;
