The Great Race in the Intelligent Driving Field: Who Will Emerge as the Champion?
The preparation before the knockout stage.
Intelligent driving companies, which are comparable to “money incinerators,” are collectively entering the listing period. Since August this year, intelligent driving companies such as Black Sesame Technologies, Horizon Robotics, WeRide, and Pony.ai have successively completed IPOs. Minieye currently has passed the hearing and is about to land on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. At the same time, the capital operation pace of intelligent driving companies such as QCraft and DeepRoute.ai is also significantly accelerating.
This wave of capital surging towards listings is the product of the convergence of two hot trends: AI and automobiles. As China’s new energy vehicle industry enters the “intelligent” second half and the explosion of artificial intelligence technology becomes a global trend, intelligent driving has gradually become a “battleground that must be contested.” Investors and even the public’s expectations for intelligent driving are also undergoing visible changes.
After nearly a decade of development, the competition in China’s intelligent driving track has become increasingly fierce, and the knockout stage is about to begin. At this point, intelligent driving companies not only have an urgent need for capital “blood transfusions” but also a strategic need for phased preparations to replenish ammunition and strengthen barriers for the next stage of new battles.
Now, what are the business layouts of these intelligent driving companies active at the forefront of the market? What are the differences in their technical paths? What competitive advantages do they respectively have? Which automakers are backing them? The following will conduct a perspective and explanation one by one.
1. Pony.ai: An autonomous driving company making money from driverless trucks
On November 27, Pony.ai, which mainly engages in the Robotaxi business, rang the bell for listing. Before the IPO, Pony.ai has gone through seven rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of over 1.3 billion US dollars. Investors include Toyota Motor, FAW Group, Sequoia Capital China, Source Code Capital, IDG Capital, China Merchants Capital, etc.
The core technology of Pony.ai is the travel and logistics services built on autonomous driving technology, providing “virtual drivers” suitable for different vehicle models and scenarios. According to the prospectus, Pony.ai forms diversified revenue sources through driverless taxis (Robotaxi), driverless trucks (Robotruck), and technology licensing. From 2022 to the first half of 2024, the cumulative revenue exceeded 165 million US dollars. In the first half of 2024, the autonomous driving truck business accounted for the highest proportion of revenue and became the core revenue source.
Pony.ai has more than 190 driverless trucks, including self-operated ones and those operated in cooperation with Sinotrans. Equipped with safety drivers, they complete freight orders within the national logistics network. The fleet has accumulated about 5 million kilometers of autonomous driving mileage and has transported more than 767 million ton-kilometers in commercial operations. At the same time, Pony.ai also cooperates with Sany Group to jointly develop L4-level autonomous driving trucks.
In the driverless taxi business, Pony.ai is the first company in China to obtain a license for driverless travel services in the four first-tier cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. And it has started fully unmanned commercial charging for driverless taxis in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Currently, Pony.ai has more than 250 driverless taxis in operation, with a cumulative autonomous driving mileage of more than 33.5 million kilometers. By the end of the first half of this year, the number of registered users of the Pony.ai APP has exceeded 220,000.
The development of the driverless truck business will largely affect Pony.ai’s business model and future direction. In the foreseeable “land grabbing” competition in the Robotaxi industry in the future, Pony.ai can continuously earn software service fees with higher gross profit margins by relying on its universal autonomous driving capabilities for different vehicle models. Then, under the leverage of the software revenue model, Pony.ai can get rid of its current identity as an operator of driverless fleets and obtain higher profits and valuations.
2. WeRide: A Robotaxi technology provider that entered the game earlier than Luobo Kuaipao
On October 25, 2024, WeRide went public on the Nasdaq in the United States, becoming the “world’s first global general-purpose autonomous driving stock” and also the “world’s first Robotaxi stock.”
WeRide has布局 Robotaxi business earlier. In 2021, it launched the first Robotaxi operation project in the Middle East in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab
