China AV Newsletter - Nov. 2021

A launch of an autonomous platform with an adjustable top-head by WestWell might be just a first call for the future of autonomous driving completely new structure and the way it will transform the automotive industry as we know it. In order to increase the utilization of each vehicle but still maintaining the advantage of custom-made structure per use-case, a modular top-head could provide the ultimate solution.

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China AV Newsletter - Nov. 2021

Nov.4th:?Momenta?announced the completion of Series C+ funding round of more than $500 million. So far, Momenta completed a cumulative?Series C financing of more than $1 billion in 2021. The Series C financing was led by?IDG Capital,?GGV Genealogy Capital,?Temasek,?Yunfeng Fund,?Tencent, and?Shunwei Capital. In addition to financial investors, Momenta has received investments from?GM,?SAIC,?Daimler,?Azure Capital,?Toyota?and?Bosch, which is an impressive lineup of strategic investors, claiming subsequent cooperation projects are on the way. In this regard, Momenta CEO Cao Xudong said, "Autonomous driving is something that is both interesting and meaningful. We are committed to continuously innovating better AI to create a better life. We are honored that the company's products and R&D capabilities have been recognized by customers and investors around the world and look forward to working together to create autonomous driving that can scale."

Nov.6th:?Westwell?released Qomolo ONE, the world's first?cross-scene autonomous driving heavy-duty mobile platform?in Shanghai. Qomolo ONE continues the Lego-style vehicle design concept in appearance, adopts a new generation of fusion sensing architecture, equipped with self-researched ultra-long-range high-precision industrial-grade binocular camera, LiDAR, millimeter wave radar and other sensors, with a maximum speed of 85kph, which was found sufficient in most scenarios. Based on Qomolo One and combined with user requirements, the partners can customize the design and production of top-loading, which can be applied to unmanned operation scenarios in special firefighting, ore transportation, mobile offices and other special needs in the future.

Nov.7th:?The Shanghai Municipal Commission of Transportation?proposed to allow Autonomous Driving in the whole area of Jiading New City and the whole area of Block 386 in the new Lingang District, with 372 roads of 722km. The opening of the 28km section from the new Siping Highway to the intersection of the old port seed source base in the new Lingang area marks the opening of Shanghai's permission for intelligent network-connected vehicles to?conduct road testing activities on urban expressways. Shanghai has already opened a total of 253 test roads in four test areas in Jiading, Lingang, Fengxian and Jinqiao, with a total of 567km and more than 5,000 test scenes. Together with the new areas, Shanghai will have a total of 615 test roads, totaling 1290km. As of October 2021, Shanghai has issued 254 vehicles to 25 companies for road testing and demonstration applications, with 109 intelligent network-connected vehicles in the Jiading area alone, led by?Didi,?AutoX and?Baidu Apollo.

Nov.8th:?Horizon?Robotics?and the car intelligent technology enterprise?Untouch未动科技officially?signed a strategic cooperation agreement, to join forces on the development of software-defined cars, high-level autonomous driving and in-car intelligent interaction. The two will jointly explore the innovation and development of core intelligent vehicles technologies, promote accelerated implementation of intelligent driving, and help OEMs to provide consumers with a safer and more convenient driving experience.

Nov.9th:?QCraft?announced that it will be the first to use NVIDIA DRIVE Orin in its Driven-by-QCraft next-generation hardware solution. QCraft plan to?use NVIDIA DRIVE Orin solution?for L4 autonomous driving. At present, the autonomous driving vehicles equipped with Driven-by-QCraft hardware solutions have been tested and operated in 10 cities around the world, including Beijing, Shenzhen, Suzhou, and Silicon Valley, with a fleet of nearly 100 vehicles, capable of handling downtown, rainfall, tunnel and other scenarios.

Nov.11th:?Autonomous driving startup?ZhiTo (挚途)?has?completed a financing round of over 100 million yuan, a first funding round since its funding in 2019. Investors include?Bank of China,?China Academy of Science and Technology Development?and?Gomez Capital. This round of financing will be used to accelerate the iterative improvement of the team's L3-L5 autonomous driving AI algorithms, consolidate the advantages of full-stack self-research high-level autonomous driving algorithms, and continue to provide leading integrated solutions of autonomous driving for the logistics industry. In July this year, ZhiTo helped?FAW?Jiefang?complete the world's first high-level autonomous driving heavy truck front-end mass production for trunk scenarios.

Nov.17th:?Trunk?announced?a new round of financing of hundreds of millions of dollars, which was jointly led by?Yuexiu Industrial Fund,?Zongwei Capital?and?Bohai Zhongsheng. The new equity is dedicated to two major areas: first, mass production, a new generation of autonomous driving truck development and mass production; second, commercial scenario expansion, to promote the landing of trunk logistics autonomous driving operation business and port autonomous driving market expansion. Trunk has long realized hundreds of unmanned pickup truck deliveries in core ports such as Tianjin Port and has been approved to carry out test operations on real open highways.

Nov.18th:?MAXIEYE?announced?the completion of 300 million RMB series B financing round, which was led by?Desaysy, followed by?People.cn's Fund,?Shanghai Free Trade Zone Fund?and?Chung Wah Investment, as well as old shareholder?Xingyu. This round of financing will be mainly used for the large-scale mass production of intelligent driving products for passenger cars and commercial vehicles, as well as further R&D reserves for advanced autonomous driving technologies.

Nov.19th:?Pony.ai?announced that it has?established its fifth R&D center, Shenzhen R&D Center, in Shenzhen Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone, officially opening a multi-city strategic layout and R&D network in?Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau Bay Area?to promote the large-scale development of autonomous driving R&D and testing. After the establishment of Shenzhen R&D Center, Pony.ai's R&D network will fully cover the four first-tier cities of North, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. This initiative is expected to strengthen the road testing and commercial application of its two major businesses of autonomous driving passenger cars and commercial vehicles, and accelerate the iterative process of autonomous driving software and hardware system development.

Nov.24th:?NavInfo?announced that its high-precision positioning service provider?Sixents?and?Autowise Tech(AW.ai) have?reached a strategic cooperation. The two will work together in the field of urban sanitation to create a high-precision autonomous driving cleaning service with centimeter-level positioning accuracy and assist in the intelligent upgrading of sanitation operations. The autonomous driving intelligent sanitation cleaning vehicle target to operate in all-weather environment, providing high efficiency, high safety and low cost. It can replace cleaners in highly polluted and dangerous environments.

Nov.25th:?Beijing?officially opened the first commercial pilot of RoboTaxi service, and announced supporting management policies.?Baidu?and?Pony.ai?became the first companies allowed to carry out commercial pilot services, and at this stage will put no more than 100 autonomous driving vehicles to carry out commercial pilot services within 60 square kilometers of the Economic Development Zone. According to the management policy, under the premise of safeguarding the principle of fair competition in the market, enterprises can adopt market-based pricing mechanism; they can only?open the experience fee service?under the premise of clarifying the charging principle and payment method to passengers.

Nov.26th:?BYD?and?Momenta?established an intelligent driving joint venture,?Shenzhen Dipai Zhixing Technology Co.?The JV's business scope includes IoT application services, AI public data platform, AI basic resources and technology platform. The company is 60% owned by BYD and 40% by Momenta.

Sources:?Gasgoo; Untouch-tech; Qcraft.ai; Zhito