On November 27th, Eastern Time, Chinese autonomous driving company Xiaoma Zhixing was officially listed on NASDAQ with the stock code "PONY", becoming the first stock of Robotaxi.
Founded in 2016, Xiaoma Zhixing provides autonomous driving technology and solutions for the transportation and logistics fields to the market, and is one of the few fully autonomous driving enterprises in the world. Due to its similarity in technology roadmap, business model, and development stage with American autonomous driving company Waymo, Komatsu Zhixing is also known as the "Chinese version of Waymo" in the industry.
Due to the enthusiastic market response, investors' subscription demand for Xiaoma Zhixing's IPO (initial public offering) exceeded expectations. The company's final IPO size increased by 30% from the originally planned 15 million American Depositary Shares (ADS), with each ADS corresponding to one ordinary share, to 20 million ADS. It is reported that in addition to the publicly announced BAIC Group and Kangfu Gao, the participating institutions also include multiple old shareholders of Xiaoma Zhixing and several top international investment institutions. At the same time, four investors including Guangzhou Automobile Group also subscribed for Class A common stocks with a total value of approximately 153.4 million US dollars through private placement.
After expanding the issuance scale, if all the underwriters' over allotment rights are exercised, Xiaoma Zhixing will issue a total of 23 million ADS at the upper limit of the issuance range price of $13 per share, with a financing amount of up to $299 million, making it the largest IPO in the field of autonomous driving in the US stock market since 2024. In addition, through the synchronous private placement of approximately $153.4 million worth of common shares, the IPO fundraising amount of Little Ma Zhixing can reach approximately $452 million (approximately RMB 3.29 billion).
Since the launch of China's first Robotaxi service in 2018, Xiaoma Zhixing's autonomous driving technology and operational scale have been at the forefront of the world. It is also the first autonomous driving company in China to obtain licenses for autonomous driving travel services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Its successful listing marks the birth of the "world's first Robotaxi stock" and will accelerate the commercial landing of Xiaoma Zhixing's autonomous driving on a large scale.
Since its establishment in 2016, Xiaoma Zhixing has become a global leader in the large-scale commercialization and mass production of autonomous driving. Over the past eight years, Xiaoma Zhixing has led the industry through cycles and made unremitting breakthroughs in technological changes. Now, it has finally reached a key turning point in commercialization. The dawn of autonomous driving lies ahead, and we start with the end and will create a safer, more efficient, and convenient future transportation for society. "said Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Xiaoma Zhixing.
Virtual drivers in different scenarios
According to the prospectus, Xiaoma Zhixing continues to generate revenue in the fields of autonomous driving travel business (Robotaxi), autonomous driving freight services (Robotruck), technology authorization and application services. Its core technology is to create "virtual drivers" suitable for different vehicle models and scenarios. Through a large amount of road test data and repeated training of AI models, it can cope with various scenarios with high difficulty and high commercial value. As of now, Xiaoma Zhixing has accumulated nearly 40 million kilometers of autonomous driving test mileage worldwide, including nearly 4 million kilometers of unmanned mileage.
In terms of autonomous driving travel, Xiaoma Zhixing has deployed more than 250 Robotaxis nationwide and launched fully unmanned Robotaxis for commercial charging in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. It is expected that the Robotaxi business will achieve a shift from negative to positive gross profit per vehicle operation by 2025. According to the prospectus, as of June 30, 2024, the registered users of the "PonyPilot" app have exceeded 220000, and the daily average order volume for each fully unmanned Robotaxi exceeds 15. Currently, Robotaxi has accumulated over 33.5 million kilometers of autonomous driving road testing mileage. It is worth mentioning that Xiaoma Zhixing is the world's first enterprise to use automotive grade solid-state lasers and automotive grade NVIDIA Orin-X chip computing platform to achieve fully unmanned Robotaxi operation.
In terms of autonomous driving trucks, Xiaoma Zhixing operates a fleet of more than 190 autonomous driving trucks, including self operated vehicles and vehicles operated in cooperation with China's largest freight logistics company, Sinotrans. This fleet has accumulated approximately 5 million kilometers of autonomous driving mileage. During its commercial operation, it has transported over 767 million tons of kilometers cumulatively. Meanwhile, Xiaoma Zhixing is also collaborating with Sany Group to jointly develop L4 level autonomous driving trucks.
With the maturity of the industrial chain, breakthroughs in fully unmanned technology, and policy innovation, Xiaoma Zhixing and its partners are working together to promote commercialization. The vertical integration model of "car companies+autonomous driving companies+travel platforms" is regarded by the industry as the key to promoting the implementation of Robotaxi. In this mode, the vehicle enterprises are responsible for the mass production of the whole vehicle, the travel service platform provides service scenarios and customer acquisition channels, and the automatic driving enterprises provide automatic driving technology and operation solutions.
Xiaoma Zhixing is promoting the production and operation of thousands of vehicles on a scale of several thousand units. Currently, it cooperates with car companies including Toyota, BAIC, GAC, FAW, SAIC, etc. The cooperation involves forward research and development of vehicle models, production line construction, road testing, announcement certification and other fields, gradually achieving mass production of autonomous driving vehicles.
Among them, Xiaoma Zhixing is the only L4 autonomous driving partner of Toyota China. Xiaoma Zhixing, Toyota China, and GAC Toyota registered and established a joint venture company "Fengfeng" in April this year, investing over 1 billion yuan. It is expected to launch thousands of Platinum 4X Robotaxi vehicles in first tier cities in China from 2025 to 2026.
In addition, Xiaoma Zhixing and BAIC New Energy announced a cooperation on L4 unmanned driving vehicle development technology. Both parties will deploy at least a thousand units of BAIC New Energy Robotaxi vehicles based on the Arctic Fox Alpha T5 model to the domestic market.
In terms of cooperation with third-party travel platforms, Xiaoma Zhixing has the largest number of online car hailing and taxi platform partners in the global Robotaxi company, including Ruqi Travel, Alipay, Gaode Taxi, Jinjiang Taxi, Kangfugao Group, Emile Weber, etc., opening up a user base for subsequent service expansion and improving the ride experience.
Meanwhile, Xiaoma Zhixing has expanded its autonomous driving technology solutions and products to regions such as Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Given the complexity of domestic road conditions, the company is expected to lead China's autonomous driving technology abroad by leveraging its successful technology and commercial models accumulated domestically.
Robotaxi landing acceleration by 2025
Different from Xiaoma Zhixing's "auto enterprise+autonomous driving enterprise+travel platform" Robotaxi vertical integration mode, Baidu (09888)'s Apollo Go is currently operating independently.
In August 2024, when Baidu's second quarter financial report was released, Robin Lee, CEO of Baidu, said to the public that Robotaxi has been regarded as a very advanced field by the industry for a long time, so that no one can accurately predict how long it will take to really achieve it, but Baidu is about to achieve a regional balance of income and expenditure. "We are constantly reducing costs through innovation. With the large-scale test of the sixth generation autonomous vehicle Apollo RT6, we expect that the RT6 model will bring continuous cost reduction after it is officially put into operation."
Robin Lee said that all the cars of Apollo Go are operated by Baidu, which bears the hardware capital expenditure and depreciation costs, and is open to various business models and partnerships. "At present, the business focus of Apollo Go is still to achieve balance of payments in key cities. In the long run, our goal is to innovate through asset light models such as technology licensing to seize market opportunities."
Caizhong News Agency noted that Robin Lee attended the 2024 China 5G+Industrial Internet Conference in Wuhan on November 19 before Baidu released its third quarter financial report; The previous afternoon, he also had a discussion and exchange with Wang Zhonglin, Deputy Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee and Governor of Hubei Province, in Wuhan, and the Mayor of Wuhan, Sheng Yuechun, also participated in the discussion. This is the second time that Robin Lee has communicated with Wang Zhonglin in two years.
Observers speculate that Robin Lee's discussions with the leaders of Hubei Province and Wuhan City are likely to further expand the operation of "Apollo Go".
At present, Apollo Go has invested more than 400 driverless cars in Wuhan to operate, making it the largest city in terms of self driving taxis in China; The operational area has basically covered the main urban areas of Wuhan, including Hanyang District, Qiaokou District, Dongxihu District, Caidian District, Hongshan District, Wuchang District, Jiangxia District, etc. It is an irregular trapezoid. In some areas, Apollo Go also provides 7 * 24 hours of uninterrupted service. At the same time, Apollo Go is also open to operation in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing and other cities.
In the third quarter, the orders of Apollo Go automatic driving reached 988000, up 20% year on year. The number of fully autonomous driving orders accounts for over 70% of the total number of orders in the country, and this proportion further increased to 80% in October.
The latest news from the Transport Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government indicates that Baidu has submitted applications for pilot licenses and certificates for autonomous driving tests in October; Apollo Go also announced in late November that it would start the recruitment of "driving AI training specialists" in Hong Kong, "testing the waters" for its first Robotaxi business outside the mainland market.
Baidu expects to conduct the first phase of testing at Hong Kong airport as early as the end of 2024, initially during non peak hours.
At the October 2024 press conference of Tesla, the global leader in autonomous driving, CEO Elon Musk announced that by 2025, Texas and California are expected to be the first to launch fully unsupervised FSD (Fully Autonomous Driving) capabilities; By 2026, Tesla plans to promote its Robotaxi - Cybercab - on a large scale and promote fully autonomous driving for models such as Model 3, leading the automotive industry into a new era.
Musk revealed that hundreds of Tesla vehicles are currently undergoing training in advanced autonomous driving technology; He also expects FSD to land in China in the first quarter of 2025.
Frost& Sullivan predicts that Robotaxi will achieve large-scale commercialization around 2026, and is expected to be widely used globally by 2030. By then, the penetration rate of Robotaxi in China's smart transportation will reach 31.8%, and by 2035 it will reach 69.3%; It is expected that by 2030, the market size of Robotaxi in China and globally will reach 488.8 billion yuan and 834.9 billion yuan respectively.
It is not difficult to see that the upcoming year 2025 will be a crucial year for the acceleration of Robotaxi's landing and the local and overseas layout of various leading manufacturers.
The listing on NASDAQ is just the beginning of how autonomous driving technology is changing the world, and our journey is far from over. The breakthrough path of autonomous driving is like climbing Mount Everest, and we have chosen to persevere, be patient, and be long-term, in order to achieve a technological qualitative change that surpasses human drivers, "said Lou Tiancheng, co-founder and CTO of Xiaoma Zhixing.