On December 21, WeRide, an L4 self-driving technology company, signed a strategic cooperation and investment agreement with GAC Group and Ruqi Chuxing at the World Economic Forum's China Future Automotive and Transportation Conference. Wenyuan Zhixing officially announced its strategic investment in Ruqi Travel, and announced that it plans to launch Robotaxi operation on the Ruqi Travel platform in 2022 to provide autonomous driving travel services.
Based on gac group's vehicle research and development and fully redundant vehicle platform that can be used for fully unmanned driving, Wenyuan Zhixing's L4-level automatic driving technology and operation experience, such as Qi Chuxing's smart travel platform and massive data, the three parties will jointly promote the iteration of autonomous driving technology and vehicle research and development and manufacturing, create Robotaxi products with full driverless capabilities, and realize the large-scale operation of Robotaxi.
As early as 2018, GAC Group and Wenyuan Zhixing cooperated to launch China's first Robotaxi and carry out trial operation in Guangzhou. At the 2021 Guangzhou International Auto Show, Ruqi Chuxing and Wenyuan Zhixing jointly exhibited Robotaxi equipped with Wenyuan Zhixing's latest sensor suite, WeRide Sensor Suite 4.0, creating the first public test ride project on autonomous driving in the history of the Guangzhou Auto Show.
On December 14, Wenyuan Zhixing announced that it has received strategic investment from GAC Group. On the basis of the cooperation between GAC Group and Wenyuan Zhixing, Ruqi Chuxing joined as a travel service platform. According to reports, since its launch in 2019, Ruqi Travel has deeply cultivated the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area with the "ripple mode", and the penetration rate of travel users in the core cities of the Greater Bay Area has exceeded 30%. Ruqi Chuxing will undertake the task of helping GAC Group and Wenyuan Zhixing to achieve the landing and operation of Robotaxi.
Specifically, on the one hand, Ruqi Travel provides travel services for the C-end, has massive travel data, and the closed loop of data generation, recycling, calculation and storage can feed back GAC and Wenyuan Zhixing and accelerate the iteration of autonomous driving technology; on the other hand, Ruqi Travel has experience in platform operation, safety and compliance, and can provide system operation solutions for the commercialization of Robotaxi.
![Ruqi Travel lays out the cutting-edge technology of the automotive industry chain to attract professional talents[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)