Chinese autonomous driving company WeRide has unveiled its first cargo van, the vessel upon which it will self-drive into the world of urban logistics. WeRide will work with Chinese automobile manufacturer Jiangling Motors (JMC) and Chinese express delivery company ZTO Express to commercialize its first self-driving van at scale.

The deal was signed on Wednesday by Tony Han, founder and CEO of WeRide, Wenhui Jin, executive vice president of JMC, and Renqun Jin, vice president of ZTO, during WeRide’s latest online press conference dubbed “The Next.” As part of the agreement, WeRide and JMC will jointly design purpose-built models of the Robovan for mass production on JMC’s assembly lines, and ZTO will put the Robovans to good use in their urban logistics service, according to a statement released by the company. A WeRide spokesperson told TechCrunch that the Robovans will be based on JMC’s battery electric vehicle model with a fully-redundant vehicle platform, combined with WeRide’s full-stack software and hardware autonomous driving (AD) solutions.

WeRide has been raking in cash over the past year on its route to commercialization, with over $600 million raised from Series B and C rounds in the span of five months and a current $3.3 billion …read more

Source: Tech Crunch