AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)08/04 Report--

On August 4, Toyota Motor (China) Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Toyota China"), Xiaoma Zhixing and Guangzhou Automobile Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guangzhou Automobile Toyota") held a signing ceremony, the three announced the joint venture company, in order to promote L4 self-driving pre-loading mass production.

According to the agreement, the joint venture company will be set up this year with an investment of more than 1 billion yuan and will provide a Toyota pure electric vehicle platform for Robotaxi produced by GAC Toyota. These vehicles are equipped with a redundancy system provided by Toyota for fully self-driving vehicles, equipped with Pony Horse Zhixing's autopilot system, and put into use through the pony Zhixing Robotaxi operating platform.

Data show that Xiaoma Zhixing, founded in Silicon Valley at the end of 2016, is one of the representatives of domestic self-driving companies, co-founded by Peng Jun and Lou Tiancheng, and is headquartered in Guangzhou. According to Tianyan information, Pony Horse has received a total of eight rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of more than 1.1 billion US dollars, including Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital, Morningside Capital, Junlian Capital, Siming Investment, Toyota, FAW Group and so on. On March 7, 2022, Horse Zhihang completed its first D-round financing with a valuation of US $8.5 billion, making it the highest valued company among self-driving start-ups in China. Lawrence Steen, former CFO at the time, also said: "the company's financial position is very sound, providing a solid foundation for Ma Zhixing's development in the next few years until we start the process of large-scale commercialization."

In fact, this is not the first time Toyota and Horse Zhihang have worked together. As early as August 2019, Toyota cooperated with Horse Zhihang to promote the development of self-driving vehicles for mobile travel services in China. In September of the same year, the two sides began to promote self-driving cooperation projects on open roads in China, using Toyota's Lexus brand RX model and pony Zhihang autopilot system.

In April this year, Horse Zhixing announced through its official Weibo that a new generation of Robotaxi models equipped with the sixth-generation L4 self-driving hardware system of Horse Zhixing took the lead in opening public road tests in Beijing's Yizhuang high-level self-driving demonstration zone. It is understood that the vehicles, which are based on Toyota Sena Autono-Maas (S-AM) models, have started public road tests in Beijing and Guangzhou, and are expected to enter unmanned road tests soon.

At present, domestic well-known self-driving enterprises include Baidu Apollo, Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhihang, Antu Zhihang, Yuanrong Qixing, Shenlan Technology, and so on, most of which are in 2019. Autopilot is a relatively high-cost project. Han Xu, CEO of Wenyuan Zhixing, a self-driving company, has said bluntly that the company has been spending $100m a year.

Regarding the joint venture between Toyota and Horse Zhihang, Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. said that the electrification and intelligence of the Chinese market has become the development direction of the new energy vehicle industry. In this context, the tripartite cooperation is to take the lead in promoting the commercial landing of Robotaxi in China. This is an important move for Toyota to carry out "Chinese-style inheritance and evolution". Toyota China said that in addition to promoting the large-scale and commercial application of high-level self-driving technology in the proposed joint venture, it will also explore promoting the mass production of Robotaxi in the future. Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Little Horse Zhixing, said: the joint venture between Toyota China, Guangzhou Automobile Toyota and Xiaoma Zhihang will lead the high-quality development trend of Robotaxi unmanned, large-scale and mass production, provide stable transport capacity for self-driving travel services, and help high-level self-driving commercialization and sustainable development.

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