Chinese automaker FAW has announced a strategic investment in Pony.ai, marking the second time this year that the autonomous technology company has received funding from a leading car manufacturer. In February, Pony.ai announced that it received a strategic investment from Toyota Motor Corp.
According to a Pony.ai statement, the two companies will give full play to their respective technical and product advantages in vehicle design and manufacturing, V2X, and mobility-as-a-service. They will work to integrate their advanced autonomous driving systems and vehicle platforms to explore SAE Level 4 systems for “pre-installation mass production and business operations models.” The agreement involves a Red Flag EV passenger vehicle platform and a Jiefang Truck commercial-vehicle platform, according to Pony.ai.
Pony.ai was founded in Silicon Valley in December 2016 and is now co-headquartered in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China. It has daily testing and operations in Fremont and Irvine, CA, and Beijing and Guangzhou, China, exceeding 1.5 million autonomous kilometers in 2019.
Under CEO and Cofounder Dr. James Peng’s leadership, the company has quickly become an industry leader and launched multiple autonomous driving fleets to the public across the globe. Prior to cofounding Pony.ai, he worked at Baidu and Google for 11 years. The company’s CTO and Cofounder, Dr. Tiancheng Lou, commonly known by his handle ACRush within the programming community, began his career at GoogleX, then became the youngest T10 engineer at Baidu’s autonomous driving division.
Pony.ai currently has autonomous vehicle service pilots across the globe. It claims to be the first to launch and offer public-facing robotaxi services in California and China. Lead investors are Toyota Motor Corp., Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, Morningside Venture Capital (now 5Y Capital), Legend Capital, ClearVue Partners, and Eight Roads–Fidelity’s proprietary investment arm.
The company has key partnerships with Toyota, codeveloping autonomous technology using the Lexus RX-based vehicle platform and Pony.ai autonomous driving system. Its joint robotaxi product and service development with Hyundai launched the first public-facing robotaxi pilot in California in 2019. The supplier is working with the GAC Group on joint development of SAE Level 4 driverless vehicles for robotaxi services in urban areas. It is also collaborating with ON Semiconductor to develop next-generation image-sensing and -processing technologies for machine vision to enhance the reliability and scalability of mass-produced autonomous vehicles.
One of its more recent partnerships is with Yamibuy, an e-commerce platform based in Los Angeles, to provide an autonomous and contactless last-mile delivery service to customers in Irvine. The new delivery service provided much-needed additional capacity to address the surge of online orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pony.ai used its all-electric, autonomous driving fleet to deliver packages and groceries from Yamibuy to its customers’ doorsteps, helping to address the swell in demand while boosting delivery efficiency. Commercially, the partnership marked a major milestone for Pony.ai. It was the first time that the tech firm deployed its robotaxi fleet for goods delivery, demonstrating the versatility of its autonomous driving technology to transform mobility and logistics.
The supplier will showcase its full-stack commercial-vehicle automated driving software and hardware system for the first time at the 3rd China International Import Expo to be held November 5-10.
