The agreement aims to develop software to offer a self-driving package and accelerates Level 2-3 tech toward mass production in markets.
Chinese autonomous company WeRide received a strategic round investment from Bosch. The agreement aims to develop software to offer a more comprehensive self-driving package to potential Chinese OEM customers, which we think accelerates Level 2-3 tech toward mass production in both the Chinese market and overseas markets.
The cooperation also signed a strategic cooperation agreement and will jointly develop autonomous driving software. Under the partnership, the two companies expect to jointly develop data-driven smart-driving software covering a variety of different driving scenarios, such as urban centres, highways and elevated roads. Its functional elements will include centralized computing platforms, sensors, software applications and cloud services. According to WeRide, it will be designed with a future-proof scalable architecture.
WeRide, founded in 2019, is becoming one of China’s biggest players in the field of self-driving tech. Besides Bosch, WeRide’s also attracted investors such as Chinese automaker GAC and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. The company was valued at USD 3.3 billion by the end of 2021 and it claims to have completed more than 6.8 million miles of testing of its self-driving tech with Level 4 capability, on open roads. WeRide currently has Robotaxis, Robobuses and Robovans operating in cities including Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, Nanjing and Wuhan. In April 2022, it revealed the Level 4 Robosweeper, China’s first mass-produced self-driving street sweeper vehicle, which went on trial in the Nansha district of Guangzhou.