As of now, both domestic and international Robotaxi services are accelerating: Tesla has released new Robotaxi products, and Baidu is expanding its Robotaxi services beyond the domestic market.

At the same time, one of China's leading traditional automobile companies, 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 industry chain coordination layout in key areas such as smart wire control chassis components, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Guangzhou Parts Co., Ltd., agreed to invest no more than 0.55 billion yuan in the target company, Chenzhi Technology Co., Ltd., based on the evaluation value, and acquire 30% of the target company's equity through capital increase.

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

Why did Guangzhou Automobile Group choose to make a move at this time? A professional in the industry told the "Star Daily" reporter that the smart driving track has been hot recently. The smart driving sector in the capital markets has also become a focus. Both domestic and foreign car companies are accelerating their layouts. Guangzhou Automobile Group's move is to avoid falling behind competitors. Simultaneously, smart wire control chassis is referred to as the cornerstone of autonomous driving, a key focus area for several intelligent vehicle companies, and Xiaoma Zhixing is a leading domestic enterprise in the field of autonomous driving. "These two emerging smart driving companies can help Guangzhou Automobile Group, a traditional car company, fill its own gaps in intelligence."

The "Star Daily" reporter noted that Guangzhou Automobile Group is also a typical case of a traditional car company moving towards Robotaxi. Since entering the field in 2021, Guangzhou Automobile Group has been cooperating with technology giants, startups, and traditional car companies, but some industry professionals point out that Guangzhou Automobile Group still needs to address the bottleneck issues of overall vehicle architecture and smart driving algorithm level.

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

One of the targets of this strategic investment by Guangzhou Automobile Group is Chenzhi Technology, a new brand under Chongqing Changan Automobile, focusing on the research and development of smart automobile chassis systems. The company was established in November 2022 and has established a research layout with headquarters in Chongqing, 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 smart automobiles for chassis, providing key systems for active domain technology innovations such as automatic driving and unmanned driving.

Industry insiders believe that wire-controlled chassis, while enhancing the performance of L2 and L3 intelligent driving cars, are preparing for L4 and above automatic driving. The cooperation between Guangzhou Automobile Group and Chenzhi Technology in this round will drive the landing of high-level intelligent driving through component upgrades and leverage technological upgrades and cost advantages to increase market share.

Another target, Pony.ai, was founded in 2016 by Peng Jun, former chief architect of Baidu's autonomous driving department, and Lou Tiancheng, former well-known engineer at Baidu. It is a provider of L4-level autonomous driving solutions and has formed three major business segments: autonomous driving travel services (Robotaxi), autonomous driving freight services (Robotruck), and passenger vehicle smart driving business (POV).

Currently, Pony.ai has been approved to operate fully driverless travel services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other places. In April of this year, Pony.ai announced that its new generation of test fleet had conducted public road tests in Beijing's Yizhuang area. Later this May, it announced the official launch of driverless testing without safety personnel in the core 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 driverless autonomous driving test mileage.

Currently, Pony.ai is planning an IPO. According to the notice of overseas issuance and listing filing for Pony AI Inc. on the website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission on April 22, Pony.ai plans to issue no more than 98,149,500 shares of common stock and list on the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.

In fact, Guangzhou Automobile Group has had previous interactions with Pony.ai. Previously, Guangzhou Automobile Group and Tencent jointly initiated the establishment of the Robotaxi company Guiren, and Pony.ai is one of its strategic investors.

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

Where is Guangzhou Automobile Group's Robotaxi heading?

The 'Star Market Daily' reporter noted that as one of the traditional automotive companies, Guangzhou Automobile Group has been committed in recent years to transforming towards new energy intelligent connected vehicles through efforts in smart driving. The strategic 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 partnership with WeRide, planning to deploy a fleet of Robotaxi vehicles with a scale of tens of thousands in the coming years.

In October of last year, Guangzhou Automobile Group announced a joint investment with Guangzhou Development District Investment Group to establish a special fund of up to not more than $0.155 billion in equivalent RMB, specifically for investment in Didi's autonomous driving company.

It can be seen that Guangzhou Automobile Group is making deeper progress in Robotaxi. It is worth mentioning that Guangzhou Automobile Group's investment in Chen-Zhi Technology, which has Chongqing Changan Automobile behind it, also a traditional automotive company and part of China's four major automotive group alliance companies, with 40 years of experience in car manufacturing.

Industry insiders believe that Guangzhou Automobile Group is a typical case of a traditional automotive company entering the Robotaxi industry. Traditional automotive companies have advantages in car manufacturing experience, supply chain management, etc., making their transformation and upgrade into the Robotaxi field particularly worth noting. However, traditional automotive companies also need to face issues such as the technological bottlenecks of Robotaxi, high costs, safety responsibility determination, and public acceptance. Currently, autonomous driving technology is still not fully mature, the overall vehicle architecture and intelligent driving algorithm level are low, and how to reduce costs is key to achieving commercial landing. Compared with new forces in car manufacturing, traditional automotive companies face more complex problems and situations in the Robotaxi field.

Guangzhou Automobile Group, known as the 'Car City' of Guangzhou, continues to maintain the ambition of being in the forefront of the national automotive industry.

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

The above-mentioned industry insiders stated that in the competition for the title of the "First City of Autonomous Driving", besides issuing open and innovative policies and regulations, and creating a variety of application scenarios, Guangzhou also needs to have the industrial ecosystem scale effect. Related chips, high-precision sensors, software systems, etc., are all in the process of development, and need to move towards low cost, mass production, and vehicle-grade development.