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Recently, AutoX founder Xiao Jianxiong made the above statement in an exclusive interview with surging journalists.
Xiao Jianxiong believes that in the past few years, the autonomous driving industry has entered a stage of small outbreak, and the global autonomous driving market has reached trillions of dollars, and China has become the world’s largest autonomous driving market.
AutoX is a driverless start-up company, established in 2016. At the beginning of its establishment, it received seed round investment from Zhang Shousheng’s Danhua Capital and Xu Xiaoping’s Zhen Fund, 2017 He also received strategic investment from SAIC in 2010. In April 2019, AutoX received tens of millions of dollars in A3 round of financing led by Dongfeng and Alibaba. At the end of December of the same year, the company received a pre-B round of tens of millions of dollars led by Qianhai Zhaohong Fund.
Xiao Jianxiong is a Ph.D. in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He used to be an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University. He has 10 skills in computer vision, autonomous driving, and robotics. Years of research and engineering experience.
At a time when the global economy is facing downward pressure and the impact of the epidemic, the financing of the intelligent driving industry has shown a trend of going against this trend this year, and many autonomous driving companies have received capital blessings.
On March 2, Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced that it had received an investment of US$2.25 billion in its first round of external financing; 2 On March 26, Xiaoma Zhixing announced that it had obtained US$462 million in financing led by Toyota; on the same day, Yushi Technology announced the completion of a round B financing of strategic investment from parts giant Bosch; on May 13, Waymo received additional investors. An investment of 750 million US dollars; May 29, Didi Chuxing’s autonomous driving company completed the first round of more than 500 million US dollars of financing.
In Xiao Jianxiong’s view, the emergence of financing in the field of autonomous driving is due to the accumulation of technology to a certain stage, and the development of the industry has entered a relatively mature stage, and autonomous driving is far from people’s lives. As we get closer, the capital market regains confidence in the entire industry. “Everyone thought that autonomous driving was a very distant dream, and now it is close to people’s lives, everyone can experience the autonomous driving networkAbout car. ”
Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai, said in an interview with a surging news reporter that China’s autonomous driving is undergoing rapid development To catch up with the status of the world’s giants, Xiao Jianxiong also has similar opinions. Xiao Jianxiong said that most of China’s autonomous driving was established between 2015 and 2016. Although the establishment time is relatively short, after 4-5 years of technology accumulation, it has now reached Can catch up with even the world’s autonomous driving giants.
According to the February 27th of this year, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV, 2019) announced The annual self-driving road test transcript, among the top five companies in the MPI (Miles Per Intervention, average mileage traveled between two manual interventions) values, three are from China, namely Baidu, AutoX, and Xiao Ma Zhixing. Among them, Baidu MPI ranks first in the United States over Waymo and ranks first.
Xiao Jianxiong said that this year is an important time point for the development of autonomous driving. More and more RoboTaxi is available for ordinary citizens to experience. On April 19, Baidu has launched the RoboTaxi service in Changsha. Changsha residents can use the Baidu map or Baidu APP to make real-time call areas available. RoboTaxi. On April 27, AutoX and Gaode Taxi launched 30 RoboTaxi in Jiading, Shanghai. According to Xiao Jianxiong, AutoX will launch more RoboTaxi in more cities in the future.
Talking about when autonomous driving can go to large-scale commercial use, Xiao Jianxiong predicts that this goal can be achieved from 2022 to 2023, and at the same time predicts that RoboTaxi will be the best realization point for large-scale commercial use of autonomous driving.
Xiao Jianxiong said that it may take 20 to 30 years for the entire society to fully realize unmanned vehicles, and the commercialization of autonomous driving in the next 10 years will only fall on RoboTaxi. After taking off the safety officer and starting to charge, it can be regarded as a true driverless drive, and then large-scale commercialization is possible. “RoboTaxi has a safety officer, which means that its cost is higher than that of the traditional car-hailing, and the enterprise is losing money. Will not be promoted on a large scale. RoboTaxi can achieve large-scale commercial use only after removing the security officer, reducing costs, and starting charging. ”
How to better achieve RoboTaxi’s large-scale commercial use, Xiao Jianxiong suggested that autonomous driving technology companies and travel platforms cooperate to drive the landing of autonomous driving technology with high efficiency and high quality, massive travel data, travel app diversion, Man-machine hybrid dispatch is the three main points. In China and the United States, deep cooperation between autonomous driving technology companies and travel platforms has gradually become a trend. In the United States, Waymo has chosen to cooperate with ride-hailing company Lyft, AutoX and Gaode taxi, Didi automatic driving The company will also jointly launch the trial operation of RoboTaxi during the year.
Talking about the current obstacles to RoboTaxi’s large-scale commercial use, Xiao Jianxiong believes that it is mainly for the collection of massive data Not enough. Xiao Jianxiong said that the security officer can be basically removed at the technical level, but the relevant data accumulated is not enough at present to prove that RoboTaxi is safe enough after the removal of the security officer. Therefore, Xiao Jianxiong suggested that the local governments should introduce relevant measures as soon as possible. Regulations and opening up more areas for autonomous driving companies to collect as much data as possible to help RoboTaxi achieve large-scale commercial use.
About AutoX financing and listing Xiao Jianxiong said that the company’s current funds are relatively abundant. In addition, there are many investors actively looking for companies to discuss investment. For listing, Xiao Jianxiong said that AutoX is unlikely to be listed in the short term, and the listing location is still under consideration. “Science and Technology Board It will be a good listing platform. Of course, we are also considering going to Hong Kong for listing. When and when to list, we will do a comprehensive assessment. “