ByteDance leads A round investments of Chinese autonomous driving startup Senior.auto

Beijing (Gasgoo)- China’s autonomous driving startup Senior.auto announced today that it had landed hundreds of million RMB in its Series-A round of financing, led by TikTok’s parent, ByteDance.

Autonomous vehicle fleet; photo credit: Senior.auto

Senior.auto said that the funds would be put towards the company’s R&D, daily management, and business expansions.

Established in April 2020, Senior.auto is a young company dedicated to providing autonomous driving solutions and operation services in the pan-ports area. The company has completed its Angel round and Pre-A round of financing in May 2020 and February 2021 successively.

The company’s integrated solution consisting of LiDARs, cameras, millimeter-wave radars, and ultrasonic radars guarantee a fully redundant perception, satisfying the diverse demands under port scenarios. Its hierarchical feature fusion network allows 100% recall of obstructions, with 99.7% accuracy. Its self-developed hardware reaches 32fps of computing power, while its innovative cloud-control platform supports real-time simulation and remote monitor/control over hundreds of driverless vehicles.

Driverless operation; photo credit: Senior.auto

In June this year, Senior.auto has successfully inked the first L4 driverless commercialized paid-operation agreement with Daxie Merchants Port in Ningbo. Two months later, in August, the company signed another agreement with Jingtang Port in Tangshan.

According to the CEO of Senior.auto, He Bei, the company expects to secure 3 to 4 more driverless commercial operation deals with domestic ports during the first half of 2022. Storage-to-storage commute and trunkline logistics are two other fields the company plans to branch out to next year.

Moreover, the company is also eyeing the international market, as its partner Wang Chuhao is actively facilitating a deal with the Port of Hamburg, Germany.

Currently, Senior.auto has deployed roughly 40 vehicles for normalized autonomous operations and expects to remove all onboard safety drivers in 2022.