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China Electric eMobility eV Pony.ai Self-driving

Pony.ai launches robotaxi service with no safety officer on board in Shenzhen after Guangzhou

Pony.ai has previously been approved to provide robotaxi service without a driver in the car in Beijing and Guangzhou.

(Image credit: Pony.ai)

Pony.ai, a Chinese startup backed by Toyota Motor and Capital, has brought its fully unmanned robotaxi service to yet another Chinese mega-city as it continues to advance its self-driving ambitions.

On May 29, Pony.ai received a permit in Shenzhen to conduct robotaxi services without a safety officer in the vehicle in the city's core areas, the only one to receive the permit in the city so far, according to a press release today.

Founded in late 2016, Pony.ai has established R&D centers in Silicon Valley, Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, and is running robotaxi operations locally.

In late 2019, NIO Capital said it invested in Pony.ai for an undisclosed amount when it announced the completion of a more than $200 million fundraising. In February 2020, Pony.ai announced it had raised $400 million from Toyota.

Pony.ai launched the robotaxi app PonyPilot in December 2018 and received a permit to operate the robotaxi service for a fee in Beijing in November 2021.

On March 17, Pony.ai announced that it received a license in Beijing to operate fully unmanned robotaxi services within a 60-square-kilometer area in the Yizhuang Economic Development Zone.

On April 26, the company said it was granted permission to offer robotaxi service without a safety officer in the vehicle in Guangzhou, when it put 17 robotaxis into operation.

The expansion of the driverless footprint to Shenzhen confirms Pony.ai's ability to quickly roll out self-driving technology in different cities, it said.

Driverless vehicles need to undergo rigorous testing before hitting the road, including remote scenarios, extreme scenarios, safety management, network and data security, risk response, and a comprehensive assessment by experts and government departments, Pony.ai said.

Successfully passing these tests proves Pony.ai's technical prowess, it said.

To date, Pony.ai has more than 1 million kilometers of fully unmanned testing and nearly 200,000 paid travel orders, the company said.

Pony.ai starts offering robotaxi service in Guangzhou without safety officer in vehicles

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Alibaba China DAMO Academy Electric eMobility eV Self-driving

Alibaba backtracks on autonomous driving R&D

Alibaba's DAMO Academy's autonomous driving lab will lay off about 70 percent of its staff, while others will be transferred to the e-commerce giant's logistics arm, according to local media.

Alibaba backtracks on autonomous driving R&D-CnEVPost

(Image credit: DAMO Academy)

Alibaba, one of China's most powerful tech giants, is backing away from autonomous driving research and development, highlighting the challenges facing the field.

Alibaba's DAMO Academy no longer retains its autonomous driving business and team, which was merged into its logistics unit Cainiao, the Shanghai Securities News said in a report today, citing people from the e-commerce giant.

This means that Alibaba's autonomous driving business is entering a whole new phase of moving from cutting-edge tech exploration in the lab to applications in real-world scenarios, the report noted.

The Shanghai Securities News report did not provide more information, but according to a subsequent report by Jiemian, another local media outlet, not all of DAMO Academy's autonomous driving business was merged into Cainiao, but rather a significant layoff will be made.

DAMO Academy's autonomous driving lab previously had more than 300 people, with 80-90 receiving the option to move to work at Cainiao, while about 200 others, or about 70 percent, will be laid off, according to Jiemian.

One of the key reasons Cainiao was unable to take on all members of the team was the limited investment it was willing to make, the report said, citing an Alibaba insider.

The team that will be incorporated into Cainiao will be primarily responsible for keeping the autonomous driving robot Xiaomanlv, or little donkeys, in business and will not do much expansion, the report said.

Xiaomanlv is an L4 autonomous driving product launched by DAMO Academy's autonomous driving lab in September 2020 to serve the last three kilometers of delivery, take-out and fresh food delivery.

To date, the autonomous driving robot has entered more than 200 universities and communities, with a fleet size exceeding 500 vehicles.

It is worth noting that DAMO Academy's self-driving lab has undergone previous management changes.

In January 2022, the lab's then-head, Wang Gang, left after three years on board. In March this year, his successor, Chen Junbo, also left after one year in the position.

Alibaba's move underscores the huge challenges facing autonomous driving R&D.

At the end of March, BYD chairman and president Wang Chuanfu said at an earnings meeting that autonomous driving is nonsense that comes out of capital coercion.

BYD has more than 600,000 employees, and the company can't even replace all its workers with machines, because the machines can't simulate every scenario of manual operation, he said.

"It's not even possible to do unattended work on a fixed production line, let alone the ever-changing actual road conditions," Wang said at the time.

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China Electric eMobility eV Pony.ai Robotaxi Self-driving

Pony.ai starts offering robotaxi service in Guangzhou without safety officer in vehicles

This is the first such permit issued in Guangzhou, where Pony.ai's 17 robotaxis have been approved to provide robotaxi service without safety officers.

Pony.ai starts offering robotaxi service in Guangzhou without safety officer in vehicles-CnEVPost

(Image credit: Pony.ai)

Pony.ai, a Chinese self-driving startup backed by Toyota Motor and NIO Capital, has been granted a permit for robotaxi service without safety officers in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, after receiving a similar permit in Beijing last month.

This is the first such permit issued in Guangzhou, where Pony.ai's 17 robotaxis were approved to provide the services, according to a press release today.

Within 803 square kilometers of Guangzhou's Nansha district, passengers will have the opportunity to call a real driverless vehicle via the mobile app PonyPilot+, Pony.ai said.

During the ride, passengers who need remote assistance can communicate in real-time with backstage personnel in the vehicle by voice, the company said.

On March 17, Pony.ai announced that it had received a permit in Beijing to operate a fully unmanned robotaxi service within 60 square kilometers of the Yizhuang Economic Development Zone.

Founded in late 2016, Pony.ai has set up R&D centers in Silicon Valley, Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, and is running robotaxi operations locally.

In late 2019, NIO Capital said it invested in Pony.ai when it announced the completion of more than $200 million in fundraising. In February 2020, Pony.ai announced it had raised $400 million from Toyota.

Pony.ai starts offering robotaxi service in Guangzhou without safety officer in vehicles-CnEVPost

(Image credit: CnEVPost)

Pony.ai launched the robotaxi app PonyPilot in December 2018 and received a permit to operate the robotaxi service for a fee in Beijing in November 2021.

To date, Pony.ai has accumulated 21 million kilometers of autonomous driving, more than 1 million kilometers of fully unmanned testing and nearly 200,000 paid orders, it said today.

Baidu's robotaxi platform Apollo Go gets permit to offer fully driverless rides in Beijing

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China Electric eMobility eV Haomo Haomo DriveGPT Self-driving Smart Driving

Haomo’s self-driving ambitions leap forward with launch of DriveGPT

DriveGPT will reshape the route of vehicle intelligence technology, allowing assisted driving to evolve faster and autonomous driving to come sooner, said Haomo CEO.

(Image credit: Haomo)

The popularity of ChatGPT has led players in the autonomous driving industry to start expecting more from artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Now, a Chinese startup has released a large model of self-driving cognition, becoming the first in the industry to do so.

Great Wall Motor-backed startup Haomo.AI Technology officially launched DriveGPT today, after it previewed the AI large model in February.

DriveGPT is the first generative large model for autonomous driving that will reshape the technological path to automotive intelligence, the Beijing-based company announced today at its 8th Haomo AI Day event.

The AI model builds RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) technology by bringing in driving data for continuous optimization of self-driving cognitive decision models.

The goal of DriveGPT is to achieve end-to-end autonomous driving, and at this stage, it is mainly used to solve the cognitive decision problem of autonomous driving, said Gu Weihao, CEO of Haomo, at today's event.

DriveGPT has been opened to a limited number of partners, and the first batch includes Beijing Jiaotong University School of Computer and Information Technology, Qualcomm, Volcano Engine, Huawei Cloud, JD Technology, NavInfo, WEY Brand, and Intel.

What is DriveGPT?

GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), essentially solves for the probability of the next word occurring, sampling from a probability distribution and generating a word with each call.

This continuous loop generates a sequence of characters for various downstream tasks. ChatGPT evolved on such a model.

On February 17, as the AI frenzy generated by ChatGPT continues worldwide, Haomo upgraded its large model of self-driving cognition to DriveGPT, calling it the first of its kind in the world of self-driving cognition.

DriveGPT completed model building and validation of the first phase of data with parameters comparable in size to GPT-2, the company said at the time, adding that DriveGPT will continue to introduce large-scale real data next to continuously improve its measurement.

At today's Haomo AI Day, Gu provided more technical details about DriveGPT.

Simply put, DriveGPT is the GPT large model in autonomous driving, which is also solving for the probability of the next Token, according to Gu.

Each call is equivalent to generating a Token based on a sequence of pre-trained Tokens, which are equivalent to a word in natural language processing, except that DriveGPT's Tokens are used to describe driving scenarios.

The sequence of Tokens is a complete time sequence of driving scenarios, including the next possible state of the entire traffic environment and the state of the car.

Under a unified generative framework, DriveGPT can do multiple tasks including planning, decision making and reasoning all together, according to Gu.

DriveGPT's pre-trained model uses 120 billion parameters and is based on 40 million production vehicles' driving data.

In addition to that, Haomo used partially screened human takeover data -- roughly 50,000 Clips -- for training the feedback model, according to Gu.

To easily understand the logic behind this, Gu gives an example:

Suppose we give a prompt to reach a certain target point, this prompt may come from the navigation of a map, or in the future it may come from human voice instructions during voice interaction.

DriveGPT will generate many possible driving styles, some aggressive -- change lanes continuously to overtake and reach the target point quickly, and some will be more steady -- follow other cars to the end.

If there are no other additional prompts, then DriveGPT will follow the optimal results from the feedback training and deliver a result that is more in line with most people's driving preferences.

Coming soon

Haomo is continuing to optimize DriveGPT, and the initial results will first be used in the new Mocha DHT-PHEV with Haomo HPilot 3.0, Gu said.

The Mocha DHT-PHEV is a model of Great Wall Motor's premium brand Wey, and Gu said the model will be available soon.

"We can also provide an excellent driving experience for city NOH (Navigation on HPilot)," Gu said.

In addition to city NOH, scenarios including city cruising, driving shortcut recommendations, and extrication, autonomous driving capabilities are also expected to see new breakthroughs, according to Gu.

"Ultimately we hope to arrive at the ultimate scenario of autonomous driving: driverless," he said, adding, "We believe that DriveGPT will reshape the technological path to vehicle intelligence, allowing assisted driving to evolve faster and autonomous driving to arrive sooner."

Notably, Haomo is one of the strongest players in the autonomous driving space, despite being an under-the-radar startup, especially compared to high-profile local electric vehicle companies.

Haomo was the former autonomous driving division of Great Wall Motor and became an independent company in November 2019. Its core team members come partly from Great Wall Motor's smart driving R&D team and partly from local tech companies.

In September 2022, Funky Cat and Wey Coffee 01 from Great Wall Motor achieved results comparable to the Tesla Model Y in a European safety test.

Both the Ora Funky Cat and the Wey Coffee 01 were equipped with assisted driving technology provided by Haomo, which was a major reason for their high scores, especially on Safety Assist, at the time.

At the 7th AI Day event held today, January 5, Haomo announced MANA OASIS, an autonomous driving computing center launched by it and Volcano Engine, a cloud service platform owned by ByteDance, with a total computing power of 670 PFLOPS, the largest in China at the time.

The computing power support provided by MANA OASIS was key to the training and technology becoming available for DriveGPT, Gu said today.

Separately, Haomo chairman Zhang Kai said at today's event that in addition to the new Mocha DHT-PHEV, the second HPilot 3.0-equipped model, Wey Lanshan, will be launched this year.

Haomo's HPilot has been installed in nearly 20 models and has assisted users to drive more than 40 million kilometers, Zhang said.

In overseas markets, vehicles equipped with HPilot have been shipped to regions including the European Union and Israel and delivered to local consumers.

Vehicles equipped with the driving assistance system will be available in the Middle East, South Africa and Australia, and the Mexican and Russian versions of HPilot will be in mass production soon, Zhang said.

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China Electric eMobility eV Self-driving WeRide

Chinese self-driving startup WeRide plans to start autonomous vehicle testing in Singapore this year

In September 2022, WeRide launched its Singapore company and signed a memorandum of cooperation with a subsidiary of a local public transport operator in November.

(Image credit: WeRide)

Chinese startup WeRide plans to start testing autonomous vehicles in Singapore this year, as it begins to set its sights on Southeast Asian markets.

WeRide will work with Strides, a subsidiary of Singapore's largest public transport operator SMRT, to test and pilot self-driving vehicles in the Southeast Asian country, according to an article yesterday on its official WeChat account.

In September 2022, WeRide established the Singapore branch and signed a memorandum of cooperation with Strides in November, according to the article.

SMRT and another Singaporean investment house, K3 Ventures, are both strategic investors in WeRide, and they will help the company grow in Singapore and Southeast Asian markets, the article said.

On March 27, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong kicked off a six-day visit to China and visited WeRide's headquarters in Guangzhou, said the article.

WeRide's office in Singapore is hiring talents there, and the company will use the office as a regional development center for Asia Pacific operations, according to its founder and CEO Han Xu.

Founded in Guangzhou in 2017, WeRide's products include Robotaxi, Mini Robobus, Robovan, Robo Street Sweeper and SAE L2-L4 advanced smart driving solutions.

WeRide is now testing and operating driverless vehicles in 25 cities in 5 countries, according to the article.

The company has a fleet of more than 500 self-driving vehicles and more than 16 million miles of autonomous driving, WeRide said.

On March 13, Bloomberg reported that WeRide has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the US and hopes to raise as much as $500 million.

WeRide is poised to go public as early as the first half of this year, according to the report.

In March 2022, local media outlet LatePost reported that WeRide had closed a new round of over $400 million in financing, with a post-investment valuation of $4.4 billion.

Investors in the round included GAC Group, Bosch, China-Arab Investment Funds, and Carlyle Group, the report said.

WeRide unveils smaller, lower-cost self-driving sensor suite

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Apollo Go Baidu Baidu Apollo China Electric eMobility eV Robotaxi Self-driving

Baidu’s robotaxi platform Apollo Go gets permit to offer fully driverless rides in Beijing

To date, Baidu's Apollo Go has been offering fully driverless ride-hailing services in Beijing, Wuhan and Chongqing.  | Baidu.US | Baidu.HK

(Image credit: Baidu)

Baidu's ride-hailing service platform Apollo Go has won a permit to offer fully driverless rides in Beijing, allowing it to expand the service to three Chinese megacities.

The search engine giant announced the development today, saying it is the first provider of fully driverless robotaxi services in the capital city of any country worldwide. Apollo Go has previously been approved to offer the service in Wuhan and Chongqing.

Baidu Apollo will deploy a total of 10 fully driverless vehicles in Beijing's Yizhuang Economic Development Zone, according to a press release from the company.

Apollo Go is currently providing an average of more than 20 rides per vehicle per day within the area, exceeding the average number of rides taken by traditional online ride-hailing services, Baidu said.

Yizhuang is one of the active hubs for autonomous driving in China. Beijing plans to expand its high-level automated demonstration area in the Yizhuang Economic Development Zone from the existing 60 square kilometers to an eventual 500 square kilometers.

Baidu has been developing autonomous driving technology since 2013 and has accumulated more than 50 million kilometers of testing in Level 4 autonomous driving.

As of the end of January, Apollo Go offered more than 2 million cumulative rides to the public, Baidu said.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, Apollo Go provided 561,000 rides to the public, up 162 percent year-on-year, according to Baidu's fourth-quarter earnings report.

On November 29 last year, Baidu announced that it plans to scale up Apollo's operations in 2023 with fully unmanned self-driving operations in more regions.

Baidu will build the world's largest fully driverless taxi service area in 2023, maintaining its growth momentum as the world's largest robot cab provider, the company said at the time.

Baidu previously announced plans to expand its self-driving mobility service to 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030.

Baidu plans to put 200 additional driverless vehicles into operation in 2023

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ChatGPT China Electric eMobility eV Haomo Haomo DriveGPT Self-driving

Haomo unveils DriveGPT, a foundation model for self-driving cognition, amid AI frenzy

Haomo DriveGPT has now completed model building and validation of the first phase of data, with parameters comparable in scale to GPT-2.

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