Self-driving startup Momenta ready to launch fully automated driving solution in Q3

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Chinese autonomous driving startup Momenta plans to launch fully automated driving solutions in the third quarter of 2019, Cao Xudong, CEO of the startup announced on March 25 at a conference that celebrated the inauguration of its Suzhou headquarters.

In the first and second quarters of 2019, the startup is going to unveil an autonomous driving solution targeting expressway scenarios and an automated parking solution respectively, said Mr. Cao. Besides, an autonomous driving solution designed for urban scenarios will be released in the first quarter of next year. All solutions for expressway, parking and urban scenarios are available for mass production.

With respect to technology improvement, the CEO said it is necessary for Momenta to “walk on two legs”. On the one hand, it obtains a huge amount of sensor and mapping data by mass producing autonomous driving solutions, and then utilizes these data in road tests for fully autonomous driving solutions. On the other hand, the road test results should be reported to the team that is responsible for mass production, so as to keep optimizing algorithm and form a technical closed loop.

Based on the above logic, Momenta has built a series of basic architectures for big data, big computing model and algorithm platforms and designed a distributed deep learning training system dubbed ROCS. Up until now, the startup has set up computing platforms with over 4000 GPUs.

In HD map domain, Momenta has realized an accuracy in mapping and positioning within 10 cm by virtue of such devices as monocular camera, automotive-grade IMU (Inertial measurement unit), GNSS (global navigation satellite system) and chips.

From the time being, Momenta has raised over $200 million from a total of 5 financing rounds, which made the startup valued at over $1 billion. Investors include NIO Capital, Daimler AG, Sinovation Ventures, ShunWei Capital, GGV Capital, Oriza Seed and Cathay Capital’s Sino-French Innovation Fund, etc.