According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily on October 11th (Reporter: Li Mingming), Robotaxi is accelerating globally: Tesla launches a new Robotaxi product, and Baidu expands Robotaxi to markets outside the mainland of China.

At the same time, one of China's leading traditional car manufacturers, Guangzhou Automobile Group, is also accelerating its layout in intelligent driving.

On the evening of the 10th, Guangzhou Automobile Group announced that in order to strengthen the industrial chain coordination layout in key components such as intelligent wire-controlled chassis, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Guangzhou Components Co., Ltd., agreed to inject capital of up to 0.55 billion RMB into Chenzhi Technology Co., Ltd., based on the valuation of the target company, acquiring 30% equity.

The announcement also mentioned that in order to deepen business collaboration and promote the company's development in the field of autonomous driving, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Guangzhou Capital, agreed to invest 27 million US dollars (approximately 0.191 billion RMB) in Pony AI Inc.

Why did Guangzhou Automobile Group choose to act at this time? An industry insider told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that the smart driving sector has been very hot recently, with the smart driving sector in the capital markets becoming a focus. Both domestic and foreign car companies are accelerating their layouts, and Guangzhou Automobile Group's move is to keep up with the competition. At the same time, intelligent wire-controlled chassis is known as the cornerstone of autonomous driving, the key focus area for many intelligent car companies. Xiaoma Zhixing is a leading domestic player in the field of autonomous driving, and these two emerging smart driving forces can help Guangzhou Automobile Group, as a traditional car manufacturer, fill in its own gaps in smart technology.

The Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noted that Guangzhou Automobile Group is also a typical case of a traditional car manufacturer venturing into Robotaxi. Since entering the field in 2021, Guangzhou Automobile Group has been cooperating with technology giants, startups, and traditional car manufacturers. However, some industry insiders point out that Guangzhou Automobile Group still needs to address the bottleneck issues of vehicle architecture and the level of smart driving algorithms.

Guangzhou Automobile Group makes a move on two emerging smart driving forces.

Guangzhou Automobile Group's recent strategic investment target Chenzhi Technology is a brand new brand under Chongqing Changan Automobile, focusing on the research and development of intelligent automotive chassis systems. The company was established in November 2022 and has established a research and development layout with headquarters in Chongqing, centers in Shanghai, and Chengdu.

At the 2024 Beijing Auto Show, Chenzhi Technology exhibited products such as intelligent wire-controlled brakes, intelligent wire-controlled steering, intelligent wire-controlled air suspension, and wire-controlled integrated chassis. Its domain control architecture meets the requirements of future intelligent automobiles for chassis, providing key systems for active domain technological innovation such as autonomous and unmanned driving.

Industry insiders believe that wire-controlled chassis, while improving the performance of L2 and L3 intelligent driving vehicles, are preparing for L4 and above autonomous driving. The cooperation between Guangzhou Automobile Group and Chenzhi Technology this time will drive the landing of advanced intelligent driving through component upgrades, and by relying on technological upgrades and cost advantages, achieve a rise in market share.

Another target, Pony.ai, was founded in 2016 by Peng Jun, former chief architect of Baidu's autonomous driving department, and Lu Tiancheng, former renowned engineer at Baidu. It is a provider of L4 level autonomous driving solutions, with three major business segments: autonomous driving travel service (Robotaxi), autonomous driving cargo service (Robotruck), and passenger vehicle intelligent driving business (POV).

Currently, Pony.ai has been approved to conduct fully unmanned driving services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other places. In April this year, Pony.ai announced that its new generation of test fleets had conducted public road tests in Beijing Yunzhuang, followed by the announcement in May this year that it officially launched 'driverless test with no safety officer' in the core urban area of Shenzhen.

Official data shows that as of the end of August 2024, Pony.ai has accumulated over 35 million kilometers of autonomous driving road test mileage, with over 3.5 million kilometers of unmanned automatic driving test mileage.

Currently, Pony.ai is planning for an IPO. According to the CSRC website's 'Notice of Application for Overseas Issuance and Listing by Pony AI Inc. (Pony.ai Limited)', Pony.ai plans to issue no more than 9814.95 million common shares and list on the NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange in the USA.

In fact, Guangzhou Automobile Group has long had interactions with Pony.ai. Previously, Guangzhou Automobile Group and Tencent jointly established the robotaxi company Ruqi Travel, with Pony.ai as one of its strategic investors.

At the industrial level, Pony.ai signed a relevant cooperation agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Group as early as 2018, and embarked on cooperation in areas such as autonomous driving technology research and development, mass production, self-driving car (online car-hailing) demonstration operation.

Where is Guangzhou Automobile Group's Robotaxi heading?

The Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noted that Guangzhou Automobile Group, as one of the traditional automobile companies, has been committed to completing the industrial transformation to new energy intelligent connected vehicles by focusing on intelligent driving in recent years. The layout includes cooperation with local autonomous driving companies, incubation and cultivation, as well as external investments.

In December 2021, Guangzhou Automobile Group announced a strategic cooperation with Wenyuan Zhihang to deploy a Robotaxi fleet of tens of thousands in the coming years.

In October last year, Guangzhou Automobile Group announced that it would jointly establish a special fund with the Guangzhou Development Zone Investment Group with a total investment not exceeding 0.155 billion US dollars, equivalent in RMB, specifically for investing in Didi's autonomous driving company.

It can be seen that Guangzhou Automobile Group is making increasingly profound progress in the field of Robotaxi. It is worth mentioning that the company invested in Chenqi Technology this time, which is backed by Changan Automobile, another traditional automobile company, part of the top four automobile group camp in China with 40 years of vehicle manufacturing experience.

Industry insiders believe that Guangzhou Automobile Group is a typical case of a traditional car company entering the Robotaxi sector. Traditional car companies have advantages in vehicle manufacturing experience, supply chain management, and their transition to the Robotaxi field is particularly noteworthy. However, traditional car companies also need to face issues such as technological bottlenecks in Robotaxi, high costs, safety responsibility, public acceptance, etc. Currently, autonomous driving technology is not yet fully mature, the vehicle architecture and intelligent driving algorithm level are low, and reducing costs is key to achieving commercial deployment. Compared with new car-making forces, traditional car companies face more complex issues and situations in the Robotaxi field.

Guangzhou Automobile Group also carries the ambition to maintain Guangzhou as the 'City of Automobiles,' continuing to stay at the forefront of the national automobile industry.

Although Guangzhou's automobile production has ranked first in the country for five consecutive years, the 'Mid-to-Long-Term Development Plan for the Automobile Industry in Guangzhou' issued at the end of last year also mentioned that the mismatch between components and vehicle manufacturing in the Guangzhou automobile industry's supply chain system is prominent. In 2022, the ratio of automobile assembly to parts is only 1:0.47, with a low localization rate for core components, far below that of international mature automobile markets. At the same time, there are still many shortcomings in the layout of critical components for new energy smart connected vehicles, such as the three-electric systems, battery materials, vehicle-grade chips, smart driving, and vehicle operation systems.

The above-mentioned industry insiders stated that in the competition for the title of the 'first city' in autonomous driving, besides issuing open and innovative policies and regulations, creating rich application scenarios, Guangzhou also needs to possess industrial ecological scale effects. Related chips, high-precision sensors, software systems, etc., are all in the process of development towards low cost, mass production, and vehicle-grade standards.