China AV Newsletter - Oct. 2020

October presented a huge jump in all NEV OEMs stocks, including NIO that over than doubled their valuation. This trend follows the growth of Tesla valuation in the US, and just as the last focus on autonomous driving applications, NIO, Xpeng and others are investing heavily in AV applications and their growth is expected to stimulate the autonomous driving sector. Chinese new players also emerge in the chip production for automotive, Ecrax and Lingxin01 were developed to challenge leading global players including Mobileye and Nvidia. The race to autonomy continues… 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. All previous editions in both languages are also available at TheAutonomous website.

China AV Newsletter - Oct. 2020

Oct.1st: At the 2020 World New Energy Vehicle Conference, SAIC president, Wang Xiaoqiu announced that the OEM plans to launch nearly 100 new energy vehicles within the next five years! SAIC will continue to invest in three main technical segments: pure electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cells.

Oct.8th: SAIC investment, GM's venture capital unit and Hyundai Mobis, have acquired a minority stake in the start-up Envisics, which developed holographic display technology for the autonomous driving system. The company raised $50 million in this B round of financing. Envisics technology will use car's windshield to project graphics and information, which is a key for drivers to understand how the autonomous driving system can predict the road ahead.

Oct.8th: Dida Chuxing submitted a formal prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with the intention of becoming Asia's first ride-hailing company to go public. Dida focusing on the development of ride-hailing and taxis. According to a report by Frost & Sullivan, in 2019, Dida ranked first in the downwind market with a market share of 66.5%. DiDi rival is expected to raise over USD 500 million. Dida is backed by NIO, Jing Dong and cTrip.

Oct.9th: PlusAI and Full Truck Alliance announced an upgrade of their strategic cooperation. PlusAI will develop a pre-installed mass production high speed autonomous trunk system, as the exclusive supplier for Full Truck Alliance autonomous systems. PlusAI will provide three layers of service, including business operations, vehicle sales and L4 autonomous driving tech, which aims to stimulate the logistics industry shift to increase efficiency and decreased costs.

Oct.12nd: Velodyne announced a three-year supply agreement of Alpha Prime LiDAR, with Baidu. Velodyne reached a certain large scale production that is claimed to be sufficient for price reduction for Baidu Apollo various AV projects.

Oct.13rd: Hainan Province released the first stage of intelligent-autonomous vehicle open road test in the region, with a total length of 129.2 km AV road. The designated area covers Haikou, Sanya, Wenchang and Qionghai, providing enterprises with rich open road test scenarios. The AV test road is part of Hainan island tourism highway, which offers a unique island road environment and scenarios.

Oct.15th: Blue Nexus, a joint venture established by Toyota, Denso and Aisin Seiki, is focused on development of hybrid electric vehicle drive systems. The company led by Toyota has agreed to provide hybrid technology support to Chinese automaker Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC). This is the first time Toyota is willing to provide its core hybrid tech to a foreign player.

Oct.16th: SAIC Motors is set to develop a high-end new energy vehicle brand, code-named 'L.' The project will be under the leadership of Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motors, and expected to develop into an independent company, so it won’t be directly managed by the state-owned company. Focusing on upscale intelligent vehicles, the ‘L’ brand is committed to develop "a super central computer on wheels" as announced by the team.

Oct.20th: Evergrande Automobile signed an IPO guidance agreement with Haitong Securities, and registered with Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau, as it is planned to be listed on the science and Technology Innovation Board of Shanghai Stock Exchange. Evergrande will join the latest hype around EV stocks, led by Tesla, and the leading Chinese players NIO and Xpend. According to Evergrande Automobile, 70% of the funding raised will be used for the R&D, production, and sales of New Energy Vehicles (NEV), aiming to commercialize its current NEV projects in the long run.

Oct.22nd: China Mobile launched the national 5G new infrastructure vehicle road cooperation project, and released the world's largest "5G+ high precision positioning" system. China Mobile will focus on 5G autonomous driving applications and promote the rapid landing of local autonomous driving companies with the support of 5G cellular network, high-precision positioning network and vehicle road coordination network.

Oct.25th: According to the statistics of China automotive industry information network, in the first three quarters of China, the number of L2 autonomy (ADAS) models offered on the market tripled from last year!! Reaching 97 vehicles, including some models that claim L3, though these advanced L3 functions in these models have not been opened yet. As L2 autonomous driving technology has entered a competitive stage with multiple alternatives to consumers, the future competition targets expected to focus on system stability, user experience and function upgrade.

Oct.26th: Ecarx (亿咖通科技) announced the completion of A round of financing, raising 1.3 billion yuan. This round of financing is jointly invested by Baidu as a leading investor and Haina Asia venture capital fund. The investment will be used to expend expertise and variety of business areas such as cockpit intelligence, vehicle chips, full stack voice chips, intelligent travel and high-precision map. Ecarx post money valuation exceeds 10 billion yuan.

Oct.26th: BMW and Alibaba signed a strategic cooperation memorandum. According to the memorandum of cooperation, BMW and Alibaba will jointly launch online sales and service business of high-end automobile brands, in order to open up an end-to-end, online and offline digital experience.

Oct.27th: Bosch China and Alibaba Group announced a strategic cooperation in digital retail and marketing. Their new innovative operation mode, target to fully link consumers activity with enterprise digital management. Bosch is the first international enterprise to access Alibaba's business operating system.

Oct.29th: Leapmotor officially released a first intelligent driving chip - Lingxin 01. The chip was jointly developed by Leapmotor and domestic top chip enterprises for three years. Its processing performance reported to be close Mobileye top performance chip. It is claimed to have the advantages of lower energy consumption ratio and higher reliability.

Sources: EqualOcean; Gasgoo; NewsQQ; Leapmotor