Chinese autonomous driving start-up WeRide has partnered with renowned auto manufacturer company Jiangling Motors and prominent delivery organization ZTO Express to build an autonomous cargo van.
WeRide is China’s autonomous successful start-up company with a net worth of around $3.3 billion. WeRide contests with top companies, including Baidu and Pony.ai.
This artificial intelligence coalition between WeRide and delivery company ZTO express, and eminent car maker Jiangling motors have a pleasant future vision to produce the profit-oriented “Robovan” for urban and rural systematization. It means logistics firms can carry goods in a driverless van to move products from someplace to another.
The three firms have finalized the deal that indicates, WeRide will take the autonomous driving system part for the Robovan, where Jialing Motors will polish up the manufacturing department. In betwixt ZTO will set up the transportation for logistics and commercial.
WeRide’s driverless bus mechanism has paved the way for the new innovative “Robovan. “Yes, the company is brushing up on the self-driving bus named “Robo bus,” quite similar to their recent upheaval.
WeRide’s autonomous automobile ambitions started back then in 2019. WeRide has been making independent driving panels for various vehicles since 2019. In addition, they have been working relentlessly on robotics and automobile future Innovation since its launch.
Recently, Tony Han, CEO of WeRide, said, “We find the boundary between passenger and urban logistics vehicles vanishing.” “It’s an autonomous driving vehicle. If you put a seat there, it can serve as a robotaxi car. If you put a cabinet there, it is really a logistics car.”
He added, “These two applications [robotaxi and logistics] can share technology, and both of them might generate potentially significant amount revenue and profit. Why don’t we do both?”
The shortage of chips is a significant drawback of all industries, especially the automobile industry. The autonomous industry utterly depends on various chips to locate the sensors. CEO of WeRide Han said, “this unfortunate situation would affect the company’s innovation “Robovan” mass production of driverless vehicles.”
Furthermore, Han adds on “Because we are using sensor towers, all these sensors and computational units, I think the shortage of these kind of chips may affect our delivery and … our rollout plan,”
He said, if the company wants to make 10,000 to 50,000 Robovans, then the company could see an effect. These new steps involve various barrels of barriers, but we should plan accordingly to accomplish the goal.
