China AV Newsletter - Dec. 2024

Happy New Year to all of our readers!

December 2024 has been a transformative month for autonomous driving in China, marked by significant technological advancements, strategic partnerships, and regulatory developments. Tesla introduced its “Actually Smart Summon” feature, enhancing vehicle autonomy for Chinese consumers. Concurrently, Nvidia expanded its research team in Beijing, underscoring China’s pivotal role in the global autonomous vehicle landscape. Pony’s plans to scale its RoboTaxi fleet to over 1,000 vehicles by 2025, coupled with Nio’s unveiling of the ET9 sedan featuring advanced autonomous capabilities, highlight the industry’s rapid progression.

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China AV Newsletter - Dec. 2024

Dec.2nd: The United States has launched its third large-scale strike against China's semiconductor industry in three years, with the measure further tightening export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, memory chips and other strategic components, while adding 136 Chinese entities to the list of export-controlled entities. Chinese government firmly opposes the change and blame US to abuse control measures causing impedes in normal economic and trade exchanges among countries.

Dec.5th: HESAI Technology announced that its next-generation high-performance long-range LiDAR ATX has been awarded an exclusive mass production order by Changan Automobile, which includes more than ten models from its various automotive brands. The first model of this platform is expected to start mass production in the second half of 2025, and the cumulative order quantity of this cooperation will exceed 1.5 million units in the next few years.

Dec.6th: Zero Gravity Aircraft Industries announced that it has completed round A+ financing of over RMB 100 million. According to the introduction, this round of financing will be invested in the R&D, manufacturing and commercial operation of a number of new energy aircraft under Zero Gravity Aircraft Industry. The funding will focus on guaranteeing the airworthiness certification work after the acceptance of the type certificate of the multi-rotor eVTOL aircraft ZG-ONE, and helping the tilt-rotor eVTOL aircraft ZG-T6 full-size aircraft to successfully complete the landing test flight.

Dec.8th: MINIEYE passed the hearing of Hong Kong Stock Exchange and will soon be listed on the Hong Kong stock market. MINIEYE is a provider of intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit solutions in China. In the first half of this year, MINIEYE achieved revenue of RMB237 million, a YoY increase of 44.5%.

Dec.11th: Pony.ai and GAC Aion held a Robotaxi strategic cooperation signing ceremony, in which the two parties will jointly build Robotaxi mass production models. According to the agreement, the two sides will jointly develop a fully redundant front-loading mass-production Robotaxi vehicle platform based on the GAC Aion model and the seventh-generation autonomous driving software and hardware system solutions of Pony.ai. Both will promote the commercialization of fully autonomous driving Robotaxi.

Dec.12th: AVATR and Huawei have signed a strategic cooperation to expand their current relations into a new phase with new models. According to the agreement, the two parties will cooperate in product development, marketing and eco-services to support AVATR in building its next-generation series of models.

Dec.18th: GAC Group officially unveiled its flying car brand - GOVY, and its first composite-wing flying car, GOVY AirJet, also made its debut. It is reported that GOVY plans to lay out its production line and open bookings in 2025.

Dec.19th: U Power Technology has announced it completed Series B financing, with a total amount of several hundred million RMB. Equity will be used to promote mass production and capacity enhancement of U Power's Super VAN, which will assist its rapid expansion in the electric commercial vehicle market and the global application of skateboard chassis technology.

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Dec.19th: TuSimple Holdings, the former autonomous driving truck startup, said it will change its name to CreateAIand move from autonomous driving truck technology to artificial intelligence game technology development. CreateAI will focus on video games, anime production and publishing, according to a business plan document.

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Sources: Hesai; ZeroG; MiniEye; PonyAI; GAC; Huawei; Gasgoo; GAC;

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