Original Title: Exclusive | Didi Autonomous Driving Completes $300 Million Financing, L4 Model Development is Included in Internal Plan
Beijing News ShellFinancial News (Reporter Chen Weicheng) On January 28, the reporter learned exclusively from the industry that Didi Autopilot has recently completed a financing of US$300 million. This round was led by IDG Capital, followed by investment institutions such as CPE, Paulson, Sino-Russian Investment Fund, Guotai Junan International, and CCB International. At the same time, Didi Autopilot has launched a new round of financing. In addition to the over 500 million US dollars in financing led by the SoftBank Vision Fund Phase 2 publicly disclosed in May 2020, Didi Autonomous Driving has received over 800 million US dollars in investment within a year.
According to people close to Didi's autonomous driving team, in addition to planning to continue to carry out manned projects in more cities, the company is also exploring the implementation of autonomous driving technology in other scenarios besides travel. In addition, the development and mass production of L4 autonomous driving models have been listed as current internal key projects.
According to public information, IDG Capital, the newly introduced investor in Didi's autonomous driving this time, has previously deployed in the field of autonomous driving. The investment projects are mostly domestic and foreign autopilot start-up technology companies. IDG Capital has participated in the Angel Round of Xiaoma Zhixing and subsequent rounds of financing. In 2016, IDG Capital invested in Zoox, a Silicon Valley star startup company.
Didi started to form an autonomous driving R&D team in 2016 and upgraded the team to become an independent company in 2019. In June last year, Didi Autopilot announced the launch of a manned test in Shanghai. At present, it has obtained road test licenses in Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Hefei, California and other places. According to Didi, its autonomous driving company currently has more than 500 R&D personnel, covering road condition perception, high-precision maps, behavior prediction, planning and control, infrastructure and simulation, cloud control and Internet of Vehicles, autonomous driving scheduling products and operations, etc. Multiple teams.
In November 2020, Didi released the world's first customized online car D1. Didi Chuxing CEO Cheng Wei said at the press conference that by 2025, shared cars are expected to be popularized on the Didi platform by more than 1 million units, and the iterative version of the new model will be equipped with Didi's self-developed driverless module. By 2030, Didi's customized cars hope to achieve full autonomous driving.