China AV Newsletter - Oct. 2023

This edition cannot begin without starting with the striking events of October 7th that impact a whole nation and filled us with sorrow, pain and tears. Though those horrible events made another impact - unified the people, generated countless volunteer groups and the rise of people’s spirit to help one another in donations or other means. I wish safety to all units in all boarders and the fast return of all hostages.

October represented not only the shrinking activity in advanced compute between China and US with a new set of regulations on AI chips, now including NVIDIA H800/A800, but also the growing activity of autonomous driving between China and middle-east, as Pony will launch a RoboTaxi in Abu Dhabi while receiving $100M investment from Saudi Arabia. DiDi and Nullmax also raised hundreds of millions for their full stack autonomous driving so the industry seems to consolidate efforts on the market leaders. LiDARs still getting high traction as Robosense announced it delivered 20,000 LiDARs in a single month, while both LeiShen and Rayz raised hundreds of millions RMB.

?*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 - Oct. 2023

Oct.5th: China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will improve the construction of intelligent vehicle standards and regulations , strengthen the synergy of standards in the fields of automobiles and infrastructure, information and communications, in order to promote high-end development of the intelligent vehicle industry. More than 50 provinces and cities have already introduced testing regulations and implementation details for advanced intelligent vehicles. Furthermore, In the field of full autonomous driving, more than 10 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, have allowed commercial trial operation of RoboTaxi and urban public RoboBuses in specific areas and time, while scale of applications continue to expand.

Oct.8th: Leishen Lidar has completed Series D funding, raising hundreds of millions RMB . The capital will be used to increase R&D resources developing new LiDAR generation technology, 3D SLAM unmanned forklift technology, software application R&D, as well as construction of fully automated factory with automotive-grade. The company is focused now on 1550nm fiber-optic LiDAR.

Oct.8th: DiDi’s autonomous driving freight KargoBot, front-loading mass-production L4-class trucks, was recently granted a notice of autonomous driving truck road test in Beijing's Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pioneer Zone. The company received a permit to carry out public road tests within Beijing's open roads . KargoBot adopts a function called hybrid intelligent mode (globally known as platooning), meaning a single driver is presence and driving the first truck, which is equipped with L2 auxiliary driving function, while it is leading multiple L4 autonomous driving trucks without a driver, which allows improving efficiency of logistics and transport in a variety of complex scenarios in medium, short and long distance.

Oct.10th: Robosense announced that in August this year, the company's single-month sales of vehicle-mounted LiDAR exceeded 20,000 units , setting a new record for single-month deliveries in the domestic vehicle-mounted LiDAR industry. In June, Robosense's single-month sales of vehicle-mounted LiDAR reached nearly 10,000 units, and it doubled the monthly sales within 2 months only, which also account to more than half of last year's total annual sales.

Oct.12th: DiDi autonomous driving announced that it has received an investment from GAC Group. GAC Capital, a subsidiary of GAC and Guangzhou Development District Investment Group will jointly contribute to the establishment of a special fund in equal proportions, investing $149 million in DiDi autonomous driving company.

Oct.12th: Nullmax.ai , an autonomous driving technology company, announced that it has raised Series B financing round of RMB 780 million . This round was led exclusively by Stonehill Technology Limited (002195.SZ ). Upon completion of this round, Nullmax will become a controlled subsidiary within the scope of Stonehill Technology's consolidated income statement.

Oct.19th: Rayz.ai recently completed nearly RMB 100 million Series A financing , after obtaining ten million yuan angel round financing from NAVINFO in 2022. Founded in 2019, Rayz.ai is a domestic LiDAR R&D and production company, which mainly develops LiDAR products for autonomous robots, AR/VR applications.

Oct.20th: Pony.ai has signed a cooperation agreement with Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), announcing that it has joined Abu Dhabi Intelligent Driving Vehicle Industry Cluster, which is being built in Masdar City. As a new member of the cluster, Pony.ai is authorized to carry out autonomous driving road tests on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi .

Oct.24th: FAW Jiefang announced the signing of a comprehensive deepening cooperation agreement with Huawei. This cooperation pushes the cooperation between FAW Jiefang and Huawei to further integrate their respective resources to deepen the strategic partnership in AI big model technology innovation, intelligent driving and intelligent cockpit.

Oct.24th: Pony.ai has secured $100 million in round D2 financing from an investment fund owned by Saudi New Future City. The two sides agreed to set up a joint venture in Saudi Arabia's New Future City, where Pony.ai 's Robotaxi fleet, autonomous driving manufacturing and R&D center will be launched. The valuation of Pony.ai seems to remain unchanged at $8.5 billion after this round.

Oct.26th: XPeng plans to launch its driver-assistance technology XNGP (Intelligent Navigation Assisted Pilot) in Europe by the end of 2024. The OEM is on track to roll out the technology to 50 cities in China by the end of 2023. XPeng is cooperating with EU regulators' who recently announced counter-subsidy investigation into Chinese electric car companies, accordingly the company is taking "strict measures" to comply with Europe's GDPR data protection rules.

?

Sources: Lei Shen; DiDi; RoboSense; Gasgoo; Nullmax; Rayz; 36kr; News.qq; PonyAI; FAW; Huawei;