Geely Auto recently announced that its new energy vehicle subsidiary, Zeekr, has received USD 500 million in financing and is valued at CNY 60 billion.
Geely's premium brand Lotus and autonomous driving unicorn Momenta set up a company called Ningbo Lotus Robotics Co on November 12, information from data provider Qichacha shows.
The company has a registered capital of CNY 100 million, with Lotus holding 60 percent and Momenta 40 percent, the information shows.
Its business scope includes research and development of intelligent robots, artificial intelligence application software development, 5G communication technology services and information system integration services.
The company is the first in China to be jointly launched by a passenger car company and an autonomous driving company, and it will be a supplier of autonomous driving solutions to Lotus, according to a report by Auto-Bit today.
Geely acquired Lotus in 2017 and owns 51 percent of the latter, including Lotus Cars and Lotus Engineering.
Lotus' latest sports car, the Emira, opened for pre-sale in China on August 20, and it will be the brand's last fuel car.
Lotus established a new company in China, Wuhan Lotus Technology, on August 31, with an investment from NIO Capital.
The 73-year-old brand has announced plans to launch four all-electric smart cars within five years.
These include the E-Class (mid-size) smart all-electric SUV codenamed Type132, the E-Class all-electric smart four-door coupe Type133, the new all-electric smart model Type134, and the all-electric small sports car Type135.
At the upcoming Guangzhou Auto Show, Lotus will showcase the Type 132, and the self-driving function will be an important feature of the model, and the aforementioned new joint venture may prepare it for the mass production of the self-driving function, according to the report.
The Type 132 will take on the Porsche Cayenne or Tesla Model X. It will feature up to 4 LiDARs, and will use 4 - 6 Nvidia OrinX SoCs as the self-driving computing platform with over 1,000 Tops of computing power, according to Auto-Bit.
Momenta announced on November 4 that it has closed over USD 500 million in Series C+ funding, giving it a Series C round of over USD1 billion, the largest funding round in China's autonomous driving sector so far this year.
Momenta looks forward to working with a global group of customers to build driverless products that can be scaled, said the company's CEO Cao Xudong.
This article was first published by Phate Zhang on CnEVPost, a website focusing on new energy vehicle news from China