On April 24, Xiaoma Zhixing announced that it won the bid for the 2022 taxi capacity index in Nansha District, Guangzhou, becoming the first autonomous driving company in China to obtain a taxi business license.
According to the notice of winning the bid, Guangzhou Xiaoma Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd. obtained 100 transport capacity indicators in Nansha District, Guangzhou, with a service life of 5 years and operated by cruise taxis. This means that in this region, autonomous vehicles are officially included in the scope of transportation operation and management of general vehicles, and the standardized management of national unified taxis is adopted.
Pony Wise Won the Bid for Taxi Capacity Indicator
According to the data, Xiaoma Zhixing Company was established in December 2016, is an autonomous driving solution provider, the main product is Pony.ai, is based on radar, lidar, GPS and computer vision and other technologies to sense the environment, in order to achieve the purpose of automatic driving.
Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Pony Wise Walk, said: "This is a strong proof of The technical strength of Pony Wise Walk and the ability to operate travel services, and it is also an effective result of close consultation between Pony Wise Walk and relevant departments, and we are confident to provide the public with a high-quality and leading service experience and provide benchmarking commercial applications for autonomous driving for the entire industry." ”
Commercialization is imminent, covering only the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou
After obtaining the permit, Xiaoma Zhixing was allowed to invest 100 self-driving vehicles in Nansha, Guangzhou, to provide taxi services. It is expected that from May, Xiaoma Zhixing will start charging operations throughout Nansha and gradually expand its services to other parts of Guangzhou as the business is gradually expanded.
Passengers can use the service and complete payment through the PonyPilot+ App, the service period is from 8:30 to 22:30, and the charging rate is in accordance with the unified pricing standard of Taxis in Guangzhou.
PonyPilot+ App, a newly upgraded self-driving mobility service from Pony Smart Walk in April 2021, shows that as of mid-April this year, PonyPilot+ has served more than 700,000 orders.
Xiaoma Zhixing insiders told Yinxi Financial Reporter that at present, its Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) service only covers the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou areas, of which Beijing Yizhuang and Guangzhou Nansha have been allowed to land commercialization. Previously, on November 25, 2021, Xiaoma Zhixing was approved to pilot commercialized autonomous driving services to the public in Beijing.
However, although it is a self-driving taxi, the above-mentioned person also said, "According to the provisions of policies and regulations, the car is still equipped with safety officers." ”
Pony Zhixing Robotaxi commercialization pilot
In the future, Xiaoma Zhixing plans to implement autonomous driving travel commercialization services in other first-tier cities before next year, and expand its successful experience to more cities by 2025.
It is reported that Xiaoma Zhixing has set up R&D centers in Silicon Valley, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places, and has established cooperation with Toyota, FAW, GAC and other car companies. As of March 2022, Pony Has Completed Series D funding with a valuation of US$8.5 billion.
New players enter the game, Robotaxi brawl
In fact, Robotaxi, as a high-profile emerging field, has never lacked new players and competitors.
Even Xiaoma Zhixing, who is a veteran player, has faced strong opponents including Waymo, Baidu, Didi and so on since the beginning. Among them, Baidu set up a deep learning laboratory IDL as early as 2013, and began to form an autonomous driving team in the same year, which is the only other company to obtain a paid operation license for automatic driving services in Beijing.
Not only technology and travel companies, but also car companies are also enthusiastic participants in the field of automatic driving that cannot be ignored. Take Tesla, the world's largest electric vehicle salesman, as an example, which clearly announced its layout of Robotaxi as early as 2019, and plans to deploy 1 million Robotaxi by the end of 2020, although no real car has been seen so far.
On the first quarter of 2022 earnings call, Tesla CEO Musk said that it will launch new products in large quantities next year, including Tesla's Robotaxi model, with the goal of debuting in 2023 and starting mass production in 2024.
Since the second half of 2021, more car companies have embarked on the road of Robotaxi. Xiaopeng Automobile, the head car company of the new force, announced that it will enter the Robotaxi market in 2022, renovate based on Xiaopeng's existing mass production vehicles, and seek commercialization through self-developed technology and products.
Car companies such as SAIC Motor and GAC Motor have cooperated with technologically mature autonomous driving companies Momenta and Wenyuan Zhixing to jointly create autonomous driving travel services.
The research of CITIC Construction Investment Securities pointed out that the competition pattern of Robotaxi has begun to take shape, the competition gap between head enterprises is small, and the industry is still in the stage of incremental competition. In the future, robotaxi's scale will not only include the market for online ride-hailing and taxis, but also the market for replacing private cars to a certain extent. CITIC Construction Investment believes that the future Robotaxi or trillion-scale track.