Pony.ai to set up joint venture with SANY Heavy Truck

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Autonomous driving developer Pony.ai and China’s SANY Heavy Truck ("SANY"), announced the plan to set up a joint venture dedicated to building a high-end L4 autonomous driving heavy-duty truck brand.

Photo credit: Pony.ai

Combining Pony.ai’s virtue driver technology and SANY’s technological accumulation in chassis-by-wire and complete vehicle development, the duo will jointly define and develop future-proof auto-grade redundant L4 intelligent trucks for the smart logistics industry.   

Photo credit: Pony.ai

Per the partners’ plan, the joint venture will deliver its first products within the year of 2022 in a small scale. Mass production will officially kick off in 2024. The two companies expect to see the joint venture's production capacity exceed 10,000 vehicles annually after a few years from now.

Currently, the first autonomous driving prototype vehicle built on SANY’s new energy vehicle truck platform was already on the road for test and validation. In addition, the intelligent trucks manufactured by the joint venture will be powered by Pony.ai’s domain controllers developed on top of the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-level chips.

Notably, the cooperation model is not unfamiliar to Pony.ai. On March 30th, Pony.ai registered a joint venture with Sinotrans Limited, namely CYANTRON, which started operation on April 1st.

CYANTRON is headquartered in Guangzhou, while its business services the whole country. The joint venture has already set up its first operation-use subsidiary in Qingdao, a coastal city in Shandong Province.