China AV Newsletter - Oct. 2019

During the last week I attended the Smart Mobility Summit at Israel, though kept on tracking the rapid developments at the east. This newsletter focus on autonomous driving activity at China but it is still important to keep understanding the global positioning of the local industry in terms of valuations, investments and tech. Therefore this edition opens with the 40% decrease in valuation of Waymo, as at US companies continue to delay their commercialization date for Robo-Taxis. At China on the other hand we see a constant growth in the presence of autonomous vehicles that already run on roads in different use-cases than moving people. Autonomous delivery pods are popular around campus (JingDong & CaiNiao), street sweepers outdoor and indoor, and additional low-speed, closed zone use cases are being deployed. In addition, we see fast developments in long-haul delivery (TuSimple). The way to L5 autonomy might be long, but there is much more that autonomous technology can offer beyond Robo-Taxis along the way.

*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 (press for link).

China AV Newsletter - Oct. 2019

Oct.1st: Morgan Stanley analysts cut the valuation of Waymo by 40%! from USD 175 billion (CNY 12463 billion) to USD 105 billion US dollars (CNY 747 billion). The main reason for the updated valuation is the bank’s analysts believe the development of the autonomous driving industry is slower than expected. However, analysts are still optimistic about the long-term potential of autonomous driving and the potential profits of leading companies in the field. 

Oct.2nd: ZTE completed successfully 66 test cases of its V2X-OBU, including three major parts of V2X protocol consistency: PC5 interface security, network layer and message layer protocol consistency. V2X-OBU is an on-board unit which target to enable vehicle communication with all road participants in the framework of autonomous driving. 

Oct.10th: Aliyun has officially passed TISAX (Trusted Information Security Assessment and Exchange Mechanism) certification in the European automotive industry, becoming the first cloud manufacturer in Asia to pass this certification. The company was awarded TISAX Level 3 highest standard, which accords with the highest level of sensitive data such as artificial intelligence system needed to develop autonomous driving vehicle. Nowadays, intelligent vehicles produce up to 20GB of data daily. Some experts forecast that future automobiles with stronger autonomous-driving capabilities and sensors may generate up to 10GB of data per second. In this scenario AV fleets must find cloud data centers that can support real-time storage, processing and analysis in the long term.

Oct.11th: Baidu and Cangzhou signed a strategic cooperation agreement in which Baidu was awarded the first batch of 30 autonomous driving test licenses in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region issued by Cangzhou. The Apollo Autopilot fleet plan to launch a large-scale test in Cangzhou, Hebei Province by the end of the month.

Oct.12th: Chen Mo (陈默), the founder and CEO of TuSimple, said that profits could come as soon as 2020 when the system will able to replace drivers. The company expects to reach a break-even point at 2023 or 2024 once its self-driving vehicles reach mass production. However, Chen also mentioned that at worst case scenario breaks-even point may delay to 2027. 

Oct.14th: KuanDeng technology (宽凳科技), a domestic high-precision map and intelligent application solution provider, has completed A+ round financing, raising nearly RMB 100 million. The round was led by YiXing and included also previous shareholders. After this round, KuanDeng technology is looking further accelerate its commercial landing in the field of autonomous driving and vehicle road coordination.

Oct.15th: DiDi and Tsinghua University signed a cooperation agreement committed to establish the Tsinghua-DiDi Joint Research Center for Future Mobility. The parties will cooperate in multiple sectors as smart shared mobility, mobility safety, intelligent connected vehicles, big data, AI and smart urban transportation. 

Oct.18th: Ye Jie, vice president of DiDi and head of AI Labs, revealed that Didi's autonomous driving taxi will land at Shanghai by at the end of this year. Users will be able to experience the Robo-Taxi service at constrained areas around Shanghai. Didi is not only allowed to carry out full autonomous driving road test yet and therefore at early stage the team will carry out autonomous driving manned test, in which the safety driver will sit in the car but is not supposed to operate the vehicle at all.

Oct.21st: Quanta Computer, which is based at Taiwan, is offering Apple an unknown autonomous driving solution. The company confirmed that it had tested the first autonomous driving vehicle in the closed lane at the United States. Apple has been working with Quanta Computer, the main assembler of its devices, since 2015. 

Oct.23rd: Bosch and GAC Research Institute jointly released L4 level autonomous valet parking system based on vehicle networking technology. It is reported that the system will be installed in the models of GAC, and is expected to be applied in parking lots and other locations at business district in the coming years. The user will be able to control the L4 autonomous valet parking system of Bosch through mobile phone, as well as to remotely control the vehicle entering and leaving the garage a parking space. For safety reasons, the system restrict the driving speed of the vehicle at about 5-7kph. 

Oct.24th: Xu Zhijun, the chairman of Huawei, said that the tech giant plans to build a millimeter wave radar based on 5G technology, as well as developing a laser radar to solve cost and performance problems at its current smart cars. Their target is to build an "ecosystem" of on-board sensors, as Xu described: "Huawei wants to build an intelligent driving platform. Through this platform, establish a wide range of ecology, and finally through open cooperation, promote the whole automobile industry to become intelligent”.

Oct.25th: Leapmotor (零跑汽车) announced it was granted a second open road test license at Deqing County, Zhejiang Province. At present, any domestic vehicle enterprise that wish to apply an autonomous driving road test license plate is required to meet minimum standards. 

The test vehicle and the safety officer need to carry out training of more than 5000km and more than 50 hours of training respectively. The venture backend VDS is also tested in a virtual test system and the company is required to submit extensive simulation data.

Sources: CNBC; Gasgoo; Techweb; Equalocean; Leiphone;