China AV Newsletter - Jul. 2023

China is the no. 1 automotive production and consumption market for over a decade, overtaking US and EU combined. Though recently many Chinese OEMs expand globally and China became the biggest export automotive country! Nevertheless, in autonomous driving tech we find VDS players expand globally, WeRide just launched a RoboTaxi service in UAE, and about a dozen Chinese players are testing RoboTaxi fleets in California, US. Investment in the sector is slowing down as we see the impact on all markets, but there are still significant players in the sector as Hongtai Fund that just poured 1 billion for an A round in T3 Go autonomous platform.

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China AV Newsletter - July 2023

Jul.3rd: RoboSense, a LiDAR company, has filed for listing on Hong Kong stock exchange with JP Morgan and China Renaissance as joint sponsors. According to the prospectus, RoboSense has implemented SOPs for 21 automotive OEMs and 7 Tier 1 suppliers for additional nine models. In addition, RoboSense has delivered over 100,000 LiDAR units since its inception.

Jul.3rd: The UAE has approved the first autonomous driving road license, which was granted to WeRide. The Chinese VDS provider became the first nation-wide RoboTaxi autonomous driving operator in the Middle East. With this license, WeRide will be able to test and operate all types of autonomous vehicles on any road in the UAE. Dubai's goal is to have 25% of the city's transportation operated autonomously by 2030.

Jul.6th: HESAI has announced that it has been awarded the front-fit project for a number of SAIC commercial vehicle models, all of which will be equipped with the AT128 LiDAR.

Jul.10th: Beijing ICV Policy Pilot Zone Office announced the opening of "unmanned vehicle" commercial pilot for intelligent passenger vehicles. It is reported that after meeting the corresponding requirements, enterprises will be able to provide autonomous driving paid travel services to the public. Officials said that the new phase of the commercial pilot will pay more attention to the assessment of the service ability of autonomous driving enterprises, mainly focusing on passenger in-vehicle safety, traffic environment risk and autonomous driving functionality.

Jul.11th: Changan Motors and Tencent signed an agreement to deepen strategic cooperation. On the basis of previous cooperation, the two sides will strengthen cooperation in various fields such as intelligent cockpit, navigation and maps, autonomous driving, overseas ecology, and digital transformation of enterprises, and help Changan Motors accelerate its transformation into an intelligent low-carbon travel technology company.

Jul.13th: WeRide's Autonomous Driving Demonstration Project in Dalian Hi-Tech Zone made its debut in operation after 180 days of testing. WeRide's autonomous driving minibus and sanitation vehicle, were the first autonomous driving fleet vehicles to land in Dalian and been officially put into operation. WeRide has deployed 6 RoboBuses and 2 autonomous driving sanitation vehicles into operation in Dalian, and will open 4 RoboBus demonstration application routes and 1 sanitation cleaning route in phases.

Jul.19th: HYPEVIEW and JAC Group officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Hefei. According to the agreement, the two will cooperate in the fields of intelligent driving technology, mass production, and futuristic tech R&D. The two parties also plan to launch a strategic cooperation in the field of data centers, and will jointly build a closed-loop system of autonomous driving data.

July.24th: WeRide has officially obtained an autonomous sweeping vehicle road test license by the Beijing Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone, permitted to carry out autonomous driving sweeping operations in the city. The autonomous sanitation vehicles will carry out urban sweeping operations in a mixed fleet, together with traditional human operated sweeping vehicles.

July.26th: AeroFugia, part of Geely Group, signed a strategic agreement with SINO JET, in which AeroFugia will provide the core electric vertical take-off and landing vehicle (eVTOL) provider of SINO JET. In addition, the two companies signed a purchase agreement for the first 100 AE200s.

July.28th: T3 Go has completed A+ round of financing of 1+ billion RMB invested by Hongtai Fund. This round of financing will be mainly used to expand the scale of users and R&D investment in the commercialized operation platform of autonomous driving. Since the completion of $7.7 billion round A financing in 2021, and the recent A+ round of financing, the management is promoting a Pre-IPO round of financing, planning IPO immediately after in the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Sources: Robosense; WeRide; ChangAn; Gasgoo; AutomotiveNews; Tencent; 文远知行; HypeView; 沃飞长空; Geely; T3Go; SinoJet; 企业官方