Pony.ai and Neolix to Cooperate in Unmanned Distribution

Pony.ai, a Chinese automated driving start-up, announced on March 22 that it has reached a strategic cooperation with leading unmanned vehicle developer Neolix in the field of unmanned distribution in China.

Under the cooperation framework, Pony.ai and Neolix will jointly customize auto-grade automated driving domain controller, which will be supported by NVIDIA DRIVE. The domain controller will be equipped on Neolix’s fourth-generation L4 unmanned vehicle “X3 Plus.” The first phase of delivery has been completed, and the second phase of delivery will begin in April. The scale of delivery is expected to reach thousands.

Pony.ai’s “Fangzai” series products are tailored for customers and often surpass customer needs while featuring support for the large-scale application and deployment of automated driving passenger cars and commercial cars. The company launched an automated driving domain controller product in mid-2022 and officially named it “Fangzai” in early 2023. At present, it has obtained a number of pre-orders.

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Pony.ai, co-founder and CEO of James Peng, said, “Unmanned distribution is one of the important applications for automated driving technology, and has great commercial potential in the future. Neolix is one of the first users of Pony.ai’s ‘Fangzai’ domain controllers, and we are very happy to join with Neolix, a leading unmanned distribution company, to jointly promote the development of new logistics formats in smart cities.”

As of February 2023, Neolix unmanned delivery vehicles have been involved in logistics, retail, urban services, unmanned vehicle education and other fields, and have successfully implemented its technology in 13 countries, 40 cities and more than 100 applications around the world, with a cumulative safe mileage exceeding 6.2 million km and having delivered more than 2 million orders to more than 300,000 users and delivering more than 1,000 deployed vehicles.

In addition to its unmanned distribution business, Pony.ai is deploying itself into the robotaxi field. On March 17, the company announced that it had obtained a first batch of permits, and was allowed to start the automated driving travel service in Beijing. It invested in 10 unmanned automated driving vehicles, and carried out unmanned travel operations within the designated 60-square kilometer automated driving area of Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone.