China AV Newsletter - Feb. 2022

Chinese approach to autonomous driving was initially more cautious than US California regulatory environment, though with the maturity of the technology we see more and more autonomous RoboTaxi fleets deployed around the country covering rapidly growing areas in city centers. Another milestone in this race to autonomy was achieved with Chinese AutoX surpassing Waymo in number of AV vehicles deployed. Waymo (by Google) was one of the first companies to deploy autonomous vehicles on public roads, but the relatively long experience was still not enough compared to ‘China speed’ startup environment. All about this and so much more in this latest edition.

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China AV Newsletter - Feb. 2022

Feb.2nd:?Xpeng?delivered 12,922 cars in January 2022, again outstripping its domestic archrivals?NIO?and?Li Auto?in monthly sales. According to Xpeng, its YoY delivery jumped 115% in January, exceeding the monthly benchmark of 10,000 for five consecutive months. Sales of P7 reached 6,707 units, totaling 80,000 since its launch in 2020. Orders for P5, a smaller coupe unveiled in 2021, have also been climbing, with customers taking delivery of 4,029 of this model over the past month. Sales for P5 has topped 4,000 for two months in a row.?In addition, G3, a sport utility vehicle from Xpeng, sold 2,186 units in January. By the end of last month, XPeng had sold more than 150,000 cars covering all its models.

Feb.2nd:?AutoX?officially announced that its vehicles have exceeded 1,000 square kilometers of self-driving range while?preparing to expand its RoboTaxi service soon. The company has been conducting self-driving road tests in four major cities including Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Feb.3rd:?BYD?announced that sales of its new energy vehicles in January reached 93,168,?surging 361% YoY. In addition, the company's total automobile sales in January reached 95,422, up 125% YoY, which indicates the sales of oil-fueled vehicles plunged nearly 90%. BYD also said that due to the sharp rise in raw material prices and the decline of new energy vehicle purchase subsidies, it plans to raise the official guidance price of some new energy models in the near future, ranging from CNY 1,000 to 7,000.

Feb.9th:?AutoX's RoboTaxi fleet?has surpassed 1,000 units, making it the largest fully autonomous driving RoboTaxi fleet not only in China but even globally. Previously, the world's largest RoboTaxi fleet came from?Waymo, with a fleet size of about 800 units. Other domestic companies' autonomous driving fleets are in the range of 100 - 300 units. Main model in use is?Grand Jaguar, mainly distributed in four first-tier cities in?Beijing,?Shanghai,?Guangzhou?and?Shenzhen. By February 2022, AutoX's RoboTaxi's autonomous driving area will include more than 1,000 square kilometers.

Feb.9th:?California Department of Motor Vehicles?(DMV) has released its?2021 Autonomous Driving Road Test Report. Currently, 50 companies have valid permits to test autonomous driving vehicles with a safety driver in California, while seven companies have permits for driverless testing (where the vehicle does not require a safety driver). According to the report, there are 1,180 autonomous driving vehicles in operation from the 28 companies that conducted road tests in California last year traveled a total of more than 4.1 million miles, almost twice as many as in 2020. Of the 1,180 vehicles,?Waymo?operated the most vehicles, with 693, followed by?Cruise?with 138; also in terms of miles tested, Waymo and Cruise ranked in the top two, with Chinese autonomous driving startup?Pony.ai?ranking third.

Feb.10th:?Chilye?completed a?new round of financing of 100 million RMB, which was led by?Xiaomi. It is reported that the funds raised in this round of financing will be used to invest in R&D of high-voltage electrical connection and high-voltage power distribution management solutions, expand the production scale and improve the commercialization layout. Founded in 2010, Chilye develops, produces and sells core components for new energy vehicles and provides high-voltage connection solutions for whole vehicles.

Feb.16th:?Trunk.tech?announced?the official completion of Series B financing, which was led by?BAIC Production Investment. Trunk.tech said it will focus on promoting mass production of autonomous driving trucks and development of autonomous driving business in trunk logistics this year. Logistics and Robotaxi are two of the largest autonomous driving commercialization application scenarios. The relatively standardized single logistics transportation scenario, the growing demand for human efficiency in the freight industry, and the speed of scaled-up landing before Robotaxi make trunk logistics one of the most attractive scenarios where autonomous driving companies compete to enter the market.

Feb.17th:?Baidu Apollo’s Robotaxi service platform "Radish Run" has?officially landed?in?Nanshan District, Shenzhen, providing autonomous driving travel services for the public. The public only need to download the "Radish Run" App, to experience Baidu Robotaxi service. The experience project initially opened in nearly 50 sites, covering the core area of Shenzhen, by the end of this year, the service is expected to expand and cover more than 300 sites.

Feb.17th:?Volkswagen Group?is in talks with?Huawei?to?acquire one of Huawei's autonomous driving units?for and amount estimated in billions of euros. Executives from both sides have been in talks for months involving some of the technology systems in which VW Group has less of an advantage. Huawei's autonomous driving unit, which VW wants to acquire, has 700 employees, including 50 specialists.

Feb.18th:?TuSimple?has?released its Q4 and full-year 2021 financial results. The results show that TuSimple's Q4 revenue jumped 178% YoY to $2 million; net loss was $116 million, compared to $43 million during the same period last year. For the full 2021 results, revenue jumped 240% to $6 million, with a net loss of $733 million. Despite the significant increase in revenue, the company expanses expand rapidly. The reason for this is that in addition to continued investment in strategic growth and development activities, TuSimple's R&D and sales overhead expenses have increased exponentially.

Feb.25th:?BYD?has chosen?Baidu?as?its intelligent driving supplier. Specifically, Baidu will provide BYD with ANP intelligent driving products and human-machine co-driving maps. Baidu’s intelligent driving team has already entered R&D cooperation with BYD and will soon realize the mass production system for multiple models.

Feb.25th:?RoboSense?announced?a new round of strategic financing, with strategic investors including?BYD,?Yutong?and?Xiaomi, covering upstream suppliers and downstream OEMs. The new round of financing will continue to focus on the construction of the industry chain ecology of LiDAR for autonomous driving.

Feb.25th:?Autonomous driving startup?Pegasus?(云骥智行) has?completed an angel funding round of several hundred million RMB. This round of funding was led by?GL Ventures. It is reported that the funds raised in the angel round will be used to accelerate technology product development and market expansion. According to the official information, Pegasus is committed to building China's most advanced L4 level autonomous driving universal platform solution. Pegasus will start by landing low-complexity autonomous driving around urban services.

Sources:?EqualOcean, California DMV, Chilye, Apollo智能驾驶, Gasgoo, tuSimple, RoboSense;