Financing more than 1 billion yuan, "blessing" automatic driving, such as Qi travel victory?

Author | Caijing New Media Liu Fen

The travel industry has entered the second half, and there have been two important changes: one is that the commercialization of Robotaxi will become the inflection point of the industry's profitability, and the other is that the capital market is paying more and more attention to the value brought by the travel platform to the development of the autonomous driving industry.

On April 26, Ruqi Travel announced the completion of a round of financing of more than 1 billion yuan, led by GAC Group, with the participation of Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, SPARX, Ruisheng Asia, Guangzhou Production and Investment Group, Lingnan Business Travel Group, Industrial Control Capital and other institutions, which is the first financing in the domestic intelligent network travel industry in 2022. Among them, Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing have attracted attention, which is the first time that two major autonomous driving companies have invested in the same travel platform in China.

After the completion of this round of financing, Ruqi Travel will continue to deepen the strategic layout of "dual-axis drive", accelerate the commercialization of Robotaxi, and build a VaaS platform that links the entire industry, gradually becoming a global leader in autonomous driving operation technology.

So, why did Ruqi Travel obtain a huge financing of more than 1 billion yuan? Behind this, what unique technical advantages and core competitiveness has Ruqi Travel built, and what advantages does it have in promoting the commercialization of Robotaxi? More importantly, under the "blessing" of capital, can Ruqi Travel continue to convert its advantages into upward momentum and victory, and occupy the initiative in future competition?

Behind the financing: gathering "time, location, people"

Behind the successful completion of the A round of financing of more than 1 billion yuan, Ruqi Travel not only needs to grow and develop itself, but also coincides with the important role of "time, location, and people".

From the perspective of time and time, from smart travel to smart transportation is the direction of the travel industry. According to Yiou Think Tank, the size of China's smart transportation market will reach 10.6 trillion yuan in 2030. In the direction of automotive intelligence, investment hotspots are mainly in the fields of vehicles, autonomous driving solutions, chips, and lidar.

Autonomous self-driving ride-hailing is regarded as one of the most likely scenarios to achieve commercialization, coupled with the increasing number of autonomous driving companies, large car companies and travel platforms to form a complementary "golden triangle" relationship, so that the travel platform with the background of large car companies is particularly favored by the capital market. Before this round of financing, Cao Cao Travel and T3 Travel have completed financing, and Volkswagen Travel has also ushered in Alibaba's capital injection.

From a geographical point of view, Guangzhou, where Ruqi Travel is located, has a faster and more comprehensive layout of its intelligent automobile industry in China. In order to build a smart car city, Guangzhou has issued a series of policies around this goal, delineating the autonomous driving test area, and on April 24, the country's first taxi license for autonomous driving companies has been issued, which means that autonomous vehicles, that is, Robotaxi, have been officially included in the transportation operation and management of general vehicles, and the national unified taxi standardized management has been adopted. These favorable policies and resources constitute the soft power of the Greater Bay Area to develop smart cities, making the development of the autonomous driving industry more imaginative.

From a human point of view, in addition to obtaining the increase in the original investor GAC Group, such as Qi Chuxing also introduced two autonomous driving companies such as Xiaoma Zhixing and Wenyuan Zhixing and a number of high-quality investment institutions at home and abroad, forming a diversified shareholder background.

"In the past period, the industry focused on improving the system algorithm capabilities and the level of bicycle hardware, and with the development of technology, the focus began to shift to autonomous driving operation technology." Jiang Hua, CEO of Ruqi Travel, said that for Robotaxi to truly become a service, it must be operated through the travel platform.

Can the advantage turn into a win?

In Jiang Hua's view, the commercialization of Robotaxi must have a four-layer structure: the basic layer of the supply side, the carrier layer, the travel layer, and the user layer on the demand side. The basic layer creates the basic conditions and systematic guarantee for the commercialization of Robotaxi, the carrier layer is responsible for the research and development and production of Robotaxi mass production vehicles, and the travel layer ultimately provides services to users and forms a commercial closed loop. Obviously, Ruqi Travel is at the travel level.

Only if the travel platform can realize the pilot of Robotaxi and manned vehicle mixed travel through the hybrid dispatch mode, collect fees from operation, and obtain commercial value, can it create a commercial model of autonomous driving technology and make it have the vitality of market-oriented development; at the same time, in the process of operation, through data feedback, promote the iteration of bicycle technology, and begin systematic technical improvement after the technology reaches a certain level.

However, Robotaxi's commercial landing faces many obstacles, such as the contradiction between large-scale operation and cost, the contradiction between technology development and product access, the contradiction between technology maturity and commercial operation, as well as the issues of policy licensing, testing, profitability and whether users are willing to pay bills.

Ruqi Travel has a different plan for this. Caijing New Media learned that in promoting the commercialization of Robotaxi, Ruqi Travel's "dual-axis drive" strategy has two core axes: one is the "technology axis" with automatic driving as the core, and the other is the "ecological axis" with the construction of the "travel-car service" ecological closed loop as the core.

At present, Ruqi Travel has a very mature operating system, rich scenarios and massive data, which can integrate the perfect automotive industry chain of GAC Group and the Tencent Internet industry ecology to provide soil for the commercialization of Robotaxi. At the same time, the data management and application development platform "Qi Cube" independently developed by Qi Travel has laid a technical foundation for the commercialization of Robotaxi in terms of big data and artificial intelligence.

In the direction of "technology axis", As a cutting-edge technology application platform in the automotive industry chain, Ruqi Travel is using the unique advantages of the travel platform in terms of operation experience, service control and data closed loop to help OEMs and autonomous driving technology companies achieve technology iteration, vehicle mass production and commercialization, and will provide systematic technical solutions for autonomous driving for regulatory authorities.

In the direction of "ecological axis", the "Ruqi car service" created by Ruqi Travel is actively laying out the after-car service market and creating an ecological closed loop of "travel-car service", on the one hand, broadening the business ecology and improving the hematopoietic ability of the platform, on the other hand, the forward-looking layout of autonomous vehicle maintenance to prepare for the commercial operation of Robotaxi.

It can be seen that Ruqi Travel has a very clear positioning of itself, thinking about how to help OEMs, autonomous driving companies and the government to promote the development of the entire industry from the perspective of a platform party, and developing from a pure C-end traffic entrance to a VaaS platform that can link the entire industry.

It is reported that after the completion of this round of financing, Ruqi Travel will set up a Robotaxi fleet with a scale of more than 200 vehicles to put into demonstration operation this year, and build a v2x fleet with a scale of more than 1,000 vehicles, as well as fully promote the improvement of the automatic driving operation system including the operation platform, data platform and supervision platform. At the same time, the first store of Ruqi Car Service, a one-stop super service platform created by Ruqi Travel, has been officially put into operation in Guangzhou, which will anchor the future automatic driving operation scenario and explore the road of after-vehicle automation maintenance of unmanned vehicles.