China self-driving truck player Plus raises $200m

Manbang - China's "Uber for trucks," which received substantial private equity investment - re-upped in the round. It brings Plus' funding to date to nearly $400 million.

Founded in 2016 and formerly known as Plus.ai, Plus expects to enter mass production this year with 10,000 units pre-ordered. This will be executed in conjunction with state-owned automotive manufacturer FAW. Plus and FAW have developed a model capable of L3 autonomy, where drivers are still necessary but safety-critical functions are performed autonomously.

Plus also claims to be the first company to complete a cross-country commercial freight run in the US, having supplied autonomous driving technology to Land O’Lakes.

“Trucking accidents and a growing truck driver shortage affect our economy and daily lives. All of us at Plus are inspired every day to develop automated trucks that are going to make our world safer and greener, and help fleets operate with greater fuel efficiency and at lower cost,” said David Liu, CEO and co-founder of Plus.

While robotaxi services remain the mainstream target in autonomous driving, the likes of Waymo in the US and China’s Pony.ai are also targeting the truck segment because it will be the first to reach commercialization. Trucks carry goods instead of people, so the testing requirements are less stringent.

Li Rong, a general manager at Plus, told AVCJ in a previous interview that focusing on trucks offers additional advantages. For example, trucks often reach speeds of more than 80 kilometers per hour on highways, much faster than robotaxis, which generates valuable data.“If your robot has never learned about it, how can you directly apply your solution?” he said.

Plus is taking the same incremental improvement approach as Tesla, albeit focusing on L2 and L3 solutions – partial or conditional automation with the driver able to override at any time – to speed up commercialization. The company wants to standardize driving behavior across its truck fleets, with the goal of achieving a 10% saving in fuel consumption.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• CPE Capital
• automobiles
• artificial intelligence