China AV Newsletter - Nov. 2022

First thing, if you are planning to attend CES in Nevada next month, please feel free to reach out and meet me there. Don’t be a stranger ;)

Despite the slowdown in western markets, November was an exciting month in China presenting a huge amount of capital flow into all Autonomous Mobility sectors, from AI chips (ECARX) and up to flying cars! (Xpeng AEROHT). In addition, RoboTaxi fleets are becoming more and more common in the region with Baidu, Pony, WeRide and AutoX deploying more and more vehicles on public roads without any operating human in the vehicle. Another trend to watch is the rapid growth of the automotive LiDAR market in China and the implementation of LiDARs even in mid range mass-production models. Wondering when will Elon Mask change his perspective on this matter and equip future Tesla models with additional AV sensors.

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 ?or at?TheAutonomous ?website.??

China AV Newsletter - Nov. 2022

Nov.2nd:?HESAI?released?FT120, solid-state proximity blind spot detection LiDAR.?The FT120 is planned to enter mass production in the second half of 2023 and?has already received orders of over 1 million units from vehicle manufacturers . FT120 aspire to achieve an FoV of 100° (H) and 75° (V), with a maximum range of 100 meters.

Nov.3rd:?RoboSense?announced a cooperation ?with?Chery?Automobile. The two parties will accelerate the upgrade of several new models of Chery, based on RoboSense's intelligent environment sensing technology tp provide advanced intelligence driving capabilities. Chery target to use RoboSense 2nd?generation MEMS LiDAR.

Nov.6th:?Nissan?officially announced that?its Mobility Services Co., Ltd. ?has landed in?Suzhou?and will start a six-month RoboTaxi demonstration operation under the name "e23 Mobility" near Suzhou High-Tech North Station next year. The full autonomous vehicles use full-stack autonomous driving technology solution by?WeRide.

Nov.7th:?The first batch of autonomous driving highways in?Shanghai?is?officially open . This batch of new autonomous driving highways includes 22km of G1503 bypass highway, 20km of G2 Beijing-Shanghai highway and 460km of ground roads in?Jiading district. Up to this date, Shanghai has opened 926 test roads with a combined length of 1800km and 15,000 test scenes, making it one of the leading districts in the country in terms of openness to autonomous driving.

Nov.8th:?XPeng AEROHT ?has formally entered into a strategic partnership with?Agricultural Bank of ChinaGuangdong Branch,?China Construction Bank?Guangdong Branch,?CITIC Bank?Guangzhou Branch and?Pudong Development Bank?Guangzhou Branch. According to the agreement,?the four banks will jointly provide a total credit line of RMB 6 billion ?to support the development and future manufacturing of XPeng AEROHT's flying car.

Nov.9th:?OTA solution provider?ABUP ?announced?the completion of series B financing round , which was led by?GuoKeXinNeng?and followed by?Granary Capital, with a financing amount of nearly 100 million RMB. During this announcement ABUP revealed that it completed over 100 million orders from 2021, and further growth is expected by the end of 2022. According to the data disclosed by the?State Administration of Market Regulation, major car brands reported 351 OTA upgrades during 2021, reflecting 55% increase from the same period in 2020, while amount of vehicles receiving these updates reached 34.24 million, which is a surge of 307% from the same period in 2020.

Nov.14th:?ECARX?announced an agreement with?SPDB (Hong Kong)?and?CNCB (Hong Kong) Investment?Limited to?secure a $65 million senior convertible note facility , which will mature in 2025. The new financing agreement brings the company one step closer to being listed in the public market," said Tzu-Yu Shen, Chairman and CEO of ECARX.

Nov.14th:?Senior Auto ?announced?the completion of over 100 million RMB round A+ financing , led by?Tsinghua Innovation Ventures?and?WinReal Investment. The new equity will be used to expand R&D investment and accelerate the business expansion and scenario application of autonomous driving in sea-ports sector. Senior Auto was founded in April 2020, focusing on the research and commercialization of pan-port autonomous driving technology.

Nov.19th:?NavInfo?and?Huawei Cloud?signed a?strategic cooperation . The two sides will join forces in cloud computing R&D and industry areas such as autonomous driving, IoT, smart city, smart park, smart community, smart transportation and smart supply chain.

Nov.22th:?Beijing?has issued the second phase of autonomous driving test permit and?Pony.ai?was first to receive the permit and be allowed to?start autonomous driving test in Beijing with "no one in the front row and someone in the back row" . After receiving the permit, 10 autonomous driving test vehicles of Pony.ai will start this form of testing in the 60-square-kilometer core area of Beijing's Economic Development Zone, covering complex urban road scenes in?Yizhuang, which will help improve the efficiency of autonomous driving technology verification in a safe and controlled manner, while gradually expand the scale and scope of testing.

Nov.22th:?Baidu?has released its?unaudited financial results for 2022Q3 . According to the report,?Baidu Apollocontinued to be favored by leading automakers in the third quarter, and Baidu’s RoboTaxi service platform,?Radish Run, provided 474,000 rides in the last quarter only, with a cumulative order volume of more than 1.4 million orders, and an average of more than 15 rides per vehicle per day in?Beijing,?Shanghai?and?Guangzhou. The company presented cumulative sales of 11.4 billion yuan.

Nov.23rd:?Zongmu Technology's IPO application for the Science and Technology Board has been accepted by the?SSE. It is reported that Zongmu Technology?intends to raise 2 billion RMB ?for Shanghai R&D center construction project, Dongyang intelligent driving system production base project (Phase I) and supplementary working capital project.

Sources:?Hesai, Chery, Robosense, Nissan, WeRide, Gasgoo, Cennavi, ABUP, ECARX, SeniorAuto, Huawei, Baidu;