Zongmu CEO on Autonomous Driving Development

You’re an autonomous driving company, but you do a lot of things with advanced assisted driving as well. Adas, tell me, where are you right now in the evolution of the EV space? We were and you were there as well at the Beijing Auto Show. There’s lots of new technology and a lot of capacity in the EV space, lot of great funky new technology loaded into these cars. But how far away are we from full autonomous driving? That’s a key part of your business. I think that we are witnessing a lot of progress in the space for sure, right. A lot of OEMs are now launching into new products you know with featuring that what they call it you know you know NGP or you know highway and city navigation Dr. guiding pilot type of project definitely is exciting and then customers are getting more and more you know this kind of features equipping their new cars. So at ZUMU we are working very actively along with the OEMs that especially our some of our key customers to improve their you know equipment rates or attach rate for our products. We are doing both level 2 plus Adas and also especially in the parking space we have a lot of advanced features for like parking you know technologies. And in the meantime we are also thinking that even though you know we are getting a lot of exciting features on the highway and and the city. It is still maybe I would say taking a little more time to evolve to from today’s level 2 to beyond level 2. Because on open roads it is hard to get across that level 2 to Level 3 barrier due to those technical and non-technical issues and there are environmental hazards that cannot certainly be accounted for. When you get up to Level 3 and level 4 beyond, there’s a safety issue, there’s liability issues exactly, exactly. So that’s why that in within tune that we have a vision that we believe that Level 4 could potentially first happen into close compound because in this closed compound you have you know basically your driving speed is lower and so you don’t have you know fatal accident there in the meantime that you’re already pretty much arriving the final destination within The Walking distance. So you want the driver want to get relieved from the car. So we have been keep pushing for Level 4 massive production first in the close compound. So we are working with some of our OEM customers on that. And in the meantime we are also launching a new exciting you know business to deploy what we have developed for Level 4 driving close compound into an energy robot as well. So that you can once you go into that close compound you drive into that park you can just we we call it drop and go you drop off go away and then the car can pass off. And then our energy robot that we are going to launch we’ll have to do they hardly have video of it hopefully we do of of your new mobile charging robots that go around and that is something you’re launching right now absolutely right. But how competitive is the autonomous driving space in China. There’s so much was made last week when Elon Musk flew in and signed the deal with with Baidu essentially to develop or to bring FSD full self driving to China. So you have that competitor but then Neo, Expo, Huawei, everyone else is also doing what you’re doing. So there might be consolidation coming, continued consolidation in the E VS in the units, but how about in your autonomous driving space, Let me put this way, you know, autonomous driving definitely you’ll see a lot of bus, a lot of big giant guys are trying to push you know beyond the, you know what you see and feel on the road. But but if you do a reality check, the overall attach rate in the overall, you know space, market space is still relatively new and it’s only right now happening on the high end premium cars as of today and people are trying to drive it down. But then the cost of this technology is huge. So we have in a certain way that our own strategy to compete in this current situation is that we are working with our OEM customers and then help them to you know to improve their attachment. But we are focusing on close compound parking and then helping them to be their own capability into high level, you know autonomous driving. But in the meantime, we are focusing on becoming a ecosystem partner for them in a close compound. And I guess you’re you’re kind of legacy car maker agnostic. You’ll sell your system to whomever it suits, right? Yes, but you do have your key cornerstone investors. We’re like Chang on as well as Xiaomi. Now Xiaomi had a lot of buzz at the auto show launching their SU-7. They kind of loaded with technology and I hear by August they’re going to have autonomous driving capabilities. Have you signed a deal with your main cornerstone investor, Well you know both are are very important, you know investors and then they have been supporting us a lot and then like like I said you know for Chang and we are basically working with them on their next you know platform, you know, you know products. So that essentially we think that a lot of new charm cars will be equipped with our unified driving our parking system you know rolling out very soon starting from the middle of this year, their next platform we expect to see a lot of you know, you know installation. As regarding to Xiaomi, I think that we’ve been constantly discussing their first one right now is you know is in house design but then moving forward in their future, you know models we’ve been, you know we we want to work with them. Yeah, I have to ask you, I know we’re running out of time but we hear that you have filed for an IPO here in Hong Kong last or in March. When do you see that possibly happening and how much do you need to raise, I’m sorry an IPO, I’m listing here in Hong Kong. Yeah, well I can’t talk about too much about that because this is you know supposed to be a non talking topic, OK, you’re not supposed to, but the, the, the there’s speculations out there. But again you talked about the need for a lot of cost for R&D. It’s an expensive process. It is, it is. Everybody is doing that.