China AV Newsletter - Jan. 2022

Happy Chinese New Year of the Tiger! 新年快乐！After a short gap due to CES and additional biz trips, I’m happy to write again. This year CES was small but highly effective as the crowd attending was very focused and meetings planned ahead were still mostly active without significant changes. Having said that it was a relatively small event with a big number of missing booth and empty space. I hope whoever of you who attended or stayed home are all safe and looking forward meeting in person during 2022!

Back to our autonomous tech trends… It was a matter of time till tech companies will launch their own vehicles, we’ve seen announcements from Apple, Sony and Amazon but Baidu is definitely on a different gear! Its new car brand JIDU, has completed raised series A funding of $400 million, while production line is in progress, supported by Geely. In addition, more Chinese brands are entering US autonomous market, this month its BYD with a full collaboration with Nuro to build its new fleet.

Enjoy reading~

*If you prefer reading in Chinese or would like to share with colleagues – don’t forget that China AV Newsletter is also available in Mandarin via Weibo (press for link). All previous editions in both languages are also available at TheAutonomous website. 

China AV Newsletter - Jan. 2021

Jan.5th: HESAI revealed at CES 2022, its new AT128, an automotive-grade semi-solid-state LiDAR, equipped with a new generation of custom-made chipset. HESAI also released the QT128, a new generation of automotive-grade 128-line ultra-wide angle proximity LiDAR, which is a blind-filling radar for autonomous driving applications such as L4 Robotaxi and Robotruck. QT128 is planned to enter mass production in the first quarter of 2023.

Jan.8th: WeRide announced the official opening of the fully driverless minibus operation to the public in Guangzhou International Bio-Island, providing driverless micro-circulation bus service to the public. The "WeRide RoboBus" is built by WeRide and Yutong Group. It is a purely electric vehicle with no steering wheel, throttle or brakes. The unmanned vehicle is equipped with WeRide's full-stack software and hardware solutions for autonomous driving. With a maximum speed of 40 kph, it can meet day to day needs in various weather environment or scenarios, and can realize safe, stable and environmental autonomous driving on urban open roads, expressways and tunnels.

Jan.12th: Nuro, U.S. autonomous driving delivery startup, has officially unveiled its third generation of all-electric autonomous driving delivery vehicles that is planned for mass-production. The new model vehicle has twice the cargo capacity of its predecessor vehicle and is equipped with partitions and temperature-controlled compartments to ensure that cargo is at a pre-defined temperature. BYD is responsible for vehicle development, vehicle testing and manufacturing, as well as providing core first-tier assembly components such as blade batteries, motors, electronic controls and HMI. Nuro is providing technologies such as autonomous driving software, gateways, control modules and sensors. The entire vehicle production is completed by BYD's China plant, and the assembly of vehicle power cells and autonomous driving components are completed by BYD's USA Lancaster plant.

Jan.13th: Mining autonomous driving company Waytous announced the completion of nearly 300 million RMB in Series C financing, setting another record for the largest single round of financing in the circuit. This round of financing was led by Centrin SAIC Emerging Industry Fund, a subsidiary of Centrin Capital. In the past six months, Waytous has received two rounds of financing totaling more than 500 million RMB. Up date, Waytous has delivered more than 200 driverless vehicles, operating in more than 30 mines, with total commercial orders of 500 million RMB and a reorder rate of over 70%, ranking first in the industry.

Jan.14th: Horizon Robotics and SAIC-GM-Wuling formally reached a comprehensive strategic cooperation, both sides will rely on their respective technical accumulation and industrial resources in the field of automotive and AI. Their target is to promote integration and innovation in the fields of advanced assisted driving (ADAS), autonomous driving and in-vehicle intelligent interaction, jointly explore new technologies for intelligent and networked vehicles, and lead the process of intelligent driving product innovation and industrial implementation. According to the agreement details, Horizon will provide intelligent driving solutions based on its Journey chips, assisting SAIC-GM-Wuling accelerate their autonomous driving capabilities.

Jan.18th: CATL's subsidiary, Shidai Dianfu, released a battery replacement brand named EVOGO. The brand's battery replacement service consists of a battery replacement, a replacement station and a developing app. The brand will be built for all automakers and support all passenger cars and logistics vehicles class A to C. The first model of the product is dedicated for FAW Pentium NAT vehicle, and at least two more products will be released within this year.

Jan.20th: Pony.ai debuted the sixth generation of autonomous driving software and hardware system form factory design, sensors set and computing platform solution, for L4 mass production vehicles. The first Toyota S-AM will be equipped with the system, starting with road test in China this year and enter daily operation in the first half of 2023. Pony.ai 's new generation of autonomous driving software and hardware system adopts solid-state LIDAR for the first time on a large scale, with a total number of 23 sensors.

Jan.21st: Black Sesame Technologies announced a strategic cooperation with MAXIEYE. Both parties will contribute their expertise in technology and business fulcrum in intelligent driving, complement each other's strengths, focused on creating high level autonomous driving system based on multi-sensor fusion control and high-speed integrated architecture. Their target clients are OEMs that look for these capabilities in the short-run as the program will be released by year end.

Jan.24th: ECARX and Alipay signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two sides will carry out in-depth cooperation around intelligent car linkage services, jointly introducing a total of 24 categories of 10,000+ mini program ecosystem. In addition, 30 core characteristic services for intelligent cockpit system were presented, such as vahicle entertainment, tourism and catering, to create a service capability that can cover the core contact points of cockpit and cell phone for user’s travel scenarios.

Jan.26th: Baidu's intelligent car brand Jidu announced that it has completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing. It is reported that this round of financing is jointly increased by Baidu and strategic partner Geely. After the completion of the financing, Jidu will continue to enhance its investment in R&D and mass production, while the first car robot concept will be released during Beijing Auto Show in April this year, and the mass production model will be seen on the roads in 2023.

Jan.26th: Plus.ai and the cross-border logistics company WorldEX have reached a deep strategic cooperation. Both parties have decided to carry out cooperation on the application of autonomous driving technology and clean energy technology in the container truck transportation market. The 5 years’ plan is targeted to achieve cumulative launch and promotion of 3,000 autonomous driving heavy trucks, empowering Plus.ai's autonomous driving technology in the global freight market.

Jan.27th: Horizon Robotics announced the official signing of a strategic cooperation agreement with Holomatic. The parties will cooperate in the autonomous driving sector, jointly exploring cutting-edge technologies for intelligent vehicles and advanced system integration solutions. The two also intend working together to promote commercialization of full-scene autonomous driving.

Sources: EqualOcean; Finance.sina; Gasgoo; SenseTime