Haomo Zhixing is about to complete the Pre-A round of financing. Around 2016, when autonomous driving emerged in China, industry players were either leading Internet companies like Baidu, or start-ups such as Xiaoma Zhixing, Wenyuan Zhixing, and Momenta. the company. However, with the policy incentives and market demand for the transformation of the “new four modernizations” of automobiles in the past two years, domestic and foreign OEMs have also entered the game, spending a lot of money to set up research and development teams, and even set up independent companies to develop autonomous driving.
Haomo Zhixing was born under this background.
The company was established in November 2019 and was born out of the Intelligent Driving Forward Division of Great Wall Motor Technology Center. The major shareholder is Great Wall Holdings. The core team members have been responsible for ADAS system research and development within Great Wall Motors, and have accumulated nearly 10 years. Experience in mass production. In addition to OEM executives, Haomo Zhixing has also absorbed a large number of Internet and autonomous driving technology research and development experts. At present, the company has thousands of employees and is expected to exceed 2,000 by the end of next year.
Haomo Zhixing is positioned as an autonomous driving solution provider. The goal is to work with partners to achieve zero accidents, zero congestion, free travel and efficient logistics in urban traffic. Based on this goal, Haomo has set up two landing directions: self-driving passenger cars in urban scenes and unmanned logistics vehicles.
Although it is backed by big car companies, Haomo Zhixing has not made a high-profile voice until recently.
On October 4th, the Great Wall Haval H9 equipped with the Haomo Zhixing L4 autopilot system at the 15th Alxa League of Inner Mongolia’s Alxa League of Off-Road Heroes Meeting, and the top Chinese off-road driver Lu Binglong in the desert There was a “human-vehicle war”.
This scene is reminiscent of the fact that AlphaGo defeated Go world champion Lee Sedol 4:1 in March 2016, proving the powerful strength and potential of artificial intelligence.
Of course, this “human-vehicle battle” between Haomo Zhixing and Lu Binglong ended with the victory of the human racer. Although he lost to Lu Binglong, Haomo Zhixing showed his technical prowess.
Compared with ordinary road driving, desert off-roading has two main difficulties: First, the rolling sand dunes constitute a complex unstructured environment. Without any auxiliary man-made facilities such as lane lines, guardrails, etc., it is difficult to find a suitable area for traffic; second, as the temperature and humidity change within a day, the softness and friction coefficient of the fine sand surface will change dramatically. Causes difficulties in vehicle control.
In order to solve these problems, Haomo Zhixing equipped the car with 3 16-line lidars, 1 front-view camera, 4 surround-view cameras and 1 millimeter-wave radar. The multi-sensor fusion scheme can realize 360-degree real-time environmental modeling within 50 meters of the vehicle body, and the modeling accuracy of road undulations can reach 10 cm.
At the same time, the algorithm optimized for desert conditions can identify areas on the back of sand dunes that are not suitable for traffic, and areas with too many ruts and deep susceptibility to sinking. Combined with GPS positioning guidance with meter-level precision, vehicles can quickly Find the optimal driving trajectory and pass through the designated road signs on the track.
In terms of vehicle control strategies, the Haomo Zhixing team transformed the industry’s conventional fixed vehicle dynamics models and control parameters into real-time dynamic modeling, and simulated the control methods of human drivers with machine learning algorithms. In this process, the autopilot system learned to navigate freely on the soft sand surface, and even learned the creeping method of turning the steering wheel left and right in the vulnerable area.
Although desert off-road driving is quite different from urban road driving, Haomo Zhixing said that the ability to train in this “human-vehicle war” can be reused in the self-driving passenger car on urban roads. For example, sensor perception ability, data learning and understanding ability, decision control ability, etc.
In the field of self-driving passenger cars, domestic OEMs have made frequent actions. For example, based on Mobileye’s technology, Geely plans to begin delivering products with advanced driver assistance functions to users in the fall of 2021. In addition, Mobileye will provide technical support for Geely’s Robotaxi project in the future.
Speaking of differentiated advantages, Haomo Zhixing told them that they will have an advantage over the autopilot teams of most OEMs on the market in terms of start-up time and mass production experience. Their products will be carried on the Great Wall in early 2021. The new car was released earlier than Geely and other car companies.
Speaking of industry development trends, Haomo Zhixing stated that the advantages of auto-driving-related products in the future will focus on “safety” and “iteration speed”. Autonomous driving technology solution providers need in-depth cooperation with application parties. It will not be the current Tier1 or Tier2 model, but a continuous in-depth service model.
In addition to passenger cars, unmanned logistics vehicles are also the target landing scene of Haomo Zhixing.
In February this year, the Venture Capital Research Institute released the “Research Report in the Field of Unmanned Delivery”, stating that this year’s new crown pneumonia epidemic, Let the terminal logistics unmanned distribution company have unprecedented public attention. In order to solve the “last mile” logistics and distribution problem, domestic startups such as Xingshen Intelligence, Neolithic, White Rhino, and Zhixing have entered the game, and large companies such as Meituan, JD.com, and Cainiao have also tested and operated in many places across the country. Its self-driving logistics trolley is used to deliver express delivery and takeaway.
Under such fierce market competition, what differentiated value can Haomo Zhixing provide?
In response to this problem, Haomo Zhixing stated that they have great advantages in vehicle design and manufacturing, including product consistency, stability and cost-effectiveness. Its customers currently fall into two categories: One is companies that have their own software and algorithm capabilities, such as JD.com, Meituan and Ali. Haomo Zhixing can provide software and hardware solutions for vehicles; another type of customers are unmanned sales companies and logistics companies. Haomo Zhixing can provide it with “end-to-end” unmanned logistics vehicle products.
At present, Haomo Zhixing has signed commercial contracts with Ali and Meituan, but has not announced the specific time and scale of the operation.
Haomo Zhixing told that although they were established late, their commercialization progress is relatively fast, and they have obtained “a lot” of project and order revenue in the field of logistics vehicles and passenger vehicles. Continuous self-hematopoietic ability is also one of the company’s most important concerns in the future.
In terms of future planning, Hao Mo Zhi Xing said that they plan to fully implement the “simple coverage” at this stage, to the “deepening single coverage” next year, and then to the “Unicom single coverage” in 2022. “Full coverage of commuting scenes.”
Specifically, the urban scene, the high-speed scene and the parking scene are each a single coverage scene. “Simple coverage” is to solve 90% of the common problems in each scene, “deepening single coverage” is to solve 90%-100% of the long tail problem, and “unicom single coverage” is to cover each single scene connected Links, for example, to cover ramp toll stations that connect urban scenes and high-speed scenes, and “full coverage of commuting scenes” is to cover all scenes from home to company, including automatic parking.
Haomo Zhixing also mentioned that they are conducting a Pre-A round of financing and have received investment intentions from a number of strategic investors. The financing will be completed soon, and the specific financing scale will be announced at a later date.