On July 14, Banma Intelligent Automobile announced a new round of funding led by Alibaba, SAIC Group, state-backed SDIC Fund Management Co. and Yunfeng Financial Group.
Zhang Chunhui, Co-CEO of Banma, indicated that the company would increase the R&D investment in the operating system to help realize the intellectualization and digitization of the automobile industry. Meanwhile, Banma will start a new round of strategic funding to industrial capital.
According to Mr. Zhang, Banma has 11 years of precipitation in operating system technology, with over 100 million lines of code and more than 2,000 operating system-related patents. It has cooperated with SAIC, FAW, Volkswagen and other key automobile enterprises on nearly 100 car models, covering more than 3 million intelligent vehicle users. The frequency of human-vehicle intelligent interactions exceeds a figure of 10 billion.
Mr. Zhang said that with the development and popularization of intelligent vehicles, the value of operating systems will be rapidly enlarged. The Chinese smart car supplier aims to help clients build an independent and controllable software technology and service ecosystem. By making it online, it can provide users with abundant Internet services and a human-computer co-driving experience. At the same time, Banma will also work towards exerting social value in digital traffic efficiency and safety based on its operating system and Smart Cloud support.
At present, this Chinese smart auto operating system developer is focusing on the research and development of intelligent vehicle operating system software and related basic software, deeply promoting the 'OS Strategy Trilogy,' that is, revolving from intelligent vehicle operating system to intelligent cockpit operating system and an intelligent vehicle operating system. It is said that the self-developed heterogeneous integrated intelligent cockpit operating system will be implemented on a wide range of automobile brands from the coming 2nd half of 2021.
According to Zhai Jun, director of SDIC, the current automotive industry is entering the era of systematic intelligence, where the operating system is at the core of achieving a better user experience. However, the onboard systems of most domestic car companies are based on Linux, Android, QNX and other foreign systems. "Banma is the only one that truly starts from the bottom of the system and achieves self-reliance, with massive production as well as landing," Mr. Zhai said.
Mr. Zhang believes that the key is to make cars more intelligent and assist users to use cars more efficiently. He believes that Banma can provide high-level user operation experience and data operation experience together, and can help partners build up the whole 'digital link' process to build better smart cars together.