Robotruck Getting too Crowded in China?
The robotruck sector is welcoming a couple of new players!
Qiangua/Autra.tech (千挂科技) was registered in July as L4 autonomous truck technology provider. It was reported in November with a strategic investment from Xpeng, SF Express and IDG Capital. According to AutoBit (a local media), Qiangua’s CEO was previously with IDG Captial covering the TMT industry and the CTO came out of the PonyTron team of Pony.ai.
Xingxing(行猩科技) was registered in August as L2+ to L4 autonomous truck maker. The CEO used to be VP of financing, strategy and investment with Pony.ai and the CTO was a founding member and engineer at Pony.ai, based on AutoBit report.
Qingtian (擎天智卡) was registered in November to develop autonomous driving truck technologies. Two founders also came from Pony.ai, one was the CTO of PonyTron project and the other was the lead of planning and control team.
LongDrive is being established by the previous CEO of Roadstar.ai aiming at autonomous truck technologies, which was recently disclosed by InVeh (another local media).
Perhaps there are more coming up. For the ones we already know, they are likely positioned as autonomous driving technology providers while Xingxing plans to take one step further to make trucks.
In my old post about China Autonomous Driving Companies’ Evolving Approaches, one of the common strategies is for solution provider to make cars. For instance, TuSimple has created a separate company Turing Auto to build trucks. Here are a few more examples.
DeepWay is a joint venture between Baidu and Shiqiao, a company primarily engaged in commercial vehicles rental, logistics service platform and second-hand vehicle dealer. Launched by the end of 2020, DeepWay’s role is to develop and produce smart heavy-duty trucks powered by new energy. In September, its first concept model Xingtu 1 was unveiled with features like quick charging, highway autopilot and smart cabin.
Geely recently launched an electric truck model, Homtruck, through its commercial vehicle brand Farizon Auto. It is expected to enter mass production in 2024. Homtruck will be available as hybrid or pure electric with swappable batteries. It will offer automated driving features and gradually roll into fully autonomy. Furthermore, the truck comes with a living space of bed, toilet, shower, kitchen, etc.
Besides the names mentioned above, truck OEMs and e-commerce companies like Alibaba with high demand on long-haul logistics are also working on robotruck technologies in house. Is the space getting too crowed?
