China AV Newsletter - Sep. 2022

*Apologies as this edition comes in delay due to the long holidays… but hey, someone had to stay on the beach to find news about autonomous boats if we chose to pivot ;)

It is amazing to see the consolidation in full stack autonomous driving companies and the dominance the leading players in this field are gaining. WeRide, AutoX, Pony.ai, Horizon and Baidu Apollo are all mentioned in this edition as they deploy more and more autonomous fleets, including long-haul, cleaning, logistics and of course RoboTaxi. Additional less mature companies to watch are Qcraft, MaxiEye and Ecarx. Yole LiDAR report is also inside, representing the global domince of Chinese suppliers as Hesai and Robosense.

Enjoy reading~

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*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 - Sep. 2022

Sep.1st: WeRide and Huangpu District Urban Management and Comprehensive Law Enforcement Bureau of Guangzhou City have reached a cooperation to officially land the pilot service of autonomous driving new energy sanitation in Guangzhou International Bio-Island. This is the first fully unmanned sanitation vehicle landing operation project under open road in China.

Sep.1st: AutoX announced the launch of RoboTaxi demonstration service in Shanghai Pudong Jinqiao autonomous driving open road. The Pudong Jinqiao Automated Driving Open Test Road is currently the highest risk-rated open test road in Shanghai. The test road has been opened to AutoX RoboTaxi first batch of 50 AutoX Gen5 vehicles in the center of Shanghai.

Sep.3rd: Yole Intelligence, has released its "LiDAR Applications in Automotive and Industrial Sector 2022 Report". The report shows that the overall LiDAR market will continue to grow strongly over the next five years, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%, reaching $6.3 billion by 2027.

Sep.6th: Konvery, an autonomous driving data service company, announced the completion of a 10 million RMB angel round of strategic financing, with investors including Chen Tao Capital, Sany Group and Xishan Angel, who have deep layouts in the autonomous driving field. This round of financing will be used to accelerate the construction of data fast charging stations and team growth.

Sep.7th: MAXIEYE announces that it has been selected for the GAC L2 ADAS mass production project, and the selected model will be equipped with MAXIPILOT? 1.0 full-speed intelligent cruise control system. MAXIPILOT? 1.0 is the L2 intelligent driving system product realized by MAXIEYE based on internal developed full-stack ADAS capability from perception to actuation.

Sep.7th: SPACE announced that the company has been awarded another mass production project from a leading car manufacturer, for which SPACE will mass produce SPACE's self-developed S-AVP autonomous valet parking system. It is expected that hundreds of thousands of vehicles will be equipped with this product throughout the full life cycle of this model platform. This is another important business breakthrough following the announcement in 2021 that SPACE has received hundreds of thousands of mass production orders from Great Wall Motors and NETA.

Sep.15th: The 4th batch of Wuhan City intelligent network connected vehicle test has passed the risk level assessment evaluation by experts. Autonomous driving cars will pass between Wuhan Economic Development Zone and Hanyang District, carry out technical testing and commercial demonstration operations. This 4th batch of AV roads contains additional 70 km, in total intelligent network test roads in Wuhan will exceed 400 kilometers.

Sep.16th: Plus.ai officially announced the completion of full roadway trial operation of hub to hub scenario with mixed traffic of autonomous truck. The route starts at Changzhou Taihuwan Toll Station and ends at Wuxi Nanquan Toll Station, a total of 33km long, passes through the 11km long Taihu Tunnel, the longest intelligent under-lake tunnel in China.

Sep.16th: At the opening ceremony of the 2022 WICV, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology Xin Guobin said, "In the first half of this year, sales of passenger cars with combined driving assistance reached 2.28 million units, with penetration rising to 32.4%, reflecting a growth of 46.2% year-on-year." At the conference, Xin Guobin also pointed out that the country has opened more than 7,000 kilometers of test roads at all autonomous levels, with more than 15 million kilometers of total autonomous roads.

Sep.20th: Ecarx is considering going public in Hong Kong after merging with a blank check company for a U.S. listing. A listing outside the U.S. may help Ecarx hedge against any potential delisting risk, a person familiar with the matter said. In May, Ecarx agreed to merge with special-purpose acquisition company COVA Acquisition Corp. at a valuation of about $3.8 billion for the merged entity. Ecarx and COVA are reportedly still planning to complete the merger by the end of this year or early 2023, and the deal is still awaiting approval from U.S. regulators.

Sep.22nd: Qcraft and T3 Travel officially launched the public operation of Robotaxi in Suzhou. By opening the "T3 Travel" app, citizens can select the "autonomous driving" service when taking a taxi and simply book a point-to-point autonomous driving trip.

Sep.22nd: Pony.ai announced a strategic cooperation with Cao Cao Travel and Geely. Pony.ai will use its accumulation in L4 level autonomous driving technology and Robotaxi operation to build an open operation platform for intelligent driving with Cao Cao Travel and Geely, targeting to operate a Robotaxi service in Suzhou.

Sep.26th: Horizon Robotics announced that it received a strategic investment from Chery Automobile, the new equity will be mainly used for customized R&D and mass production of automotive smart chips. In addition, the two sides announced a cooperation in two fields: in-vehicle intelligent interaction and advanced assisted driving.

Sep.26th: Mobileye announced that it will further expand their collaboration with Geely on advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and advanced autonomous driving technologies. Geely Group brands plan to launch Mobileye SuperVision?-equipped electric vehicle models starting from 2023. Zeekr will also use this system on two new models and will work with Mobileye to develop new LIDAR-based features.

Sep.27th: Pony.ai announced the opening of cooperation with SAIC AI LAB to jointly explore the frontier areas of autonomous driving technology R&D and RoboTaxi service deployment. Under the cooperation framework, both parties will integrate their resources and promote R&D of fully autonomous vehicles. It is reported that the two parties have already built a fully unmanned concept vehicle based on SAIC's Marvel-R model, which is equipped with the latest generation of L4 autonomous driving. Using vehicle-grade sensors and a new generation of intelligent cockpit design such as a foldable steering wheel.

Sources: WeRide; AutoX; Yole Intelligence; Gasgoo; AutoReport; Apollo; SAIC; Poni.ai; Geely.