Zeron Technology Co., Ltd. (“Zeron”) recently has announced the completion of 140 million of CNY in pre-Series A funding.
Zeron is a solution provider for autonomous driving trucks, mainly providing truck hardware for autonomous driving software companies, focusing on the research and development, automotive parts, artificial intelligence industry application system integration services, and artificial intelligence application software development of electirc heavy trucks.
According to Zeron, one important feature of the cars is advanced intelligent driving. The first batch of cars are divided into two models, focusing on the electric heavy truck short haul freight market. Specifically, Zeron will conduct research in core areas such as powertrain, integrated thermal management, and autonomous driving technology.
According to Leadleo, China's electirc heavy-duty trucks experienced a rapid growth since 2021, and it is expected to enter an accelerated development stage in the next 3-5 years. The compound annual growth rate from 2018 to 2021 is 126.5%, and the market size is expected to expand to hundreds billion CNY by 2025.
In addition to Zeron, many companies are competing in the electirc heavy-duty truck market, such as SANY (三一重卡), Foton (福田智蓝), SAIC Hongyan (上汽红岩), XCMG (徐工汽车) in China, Tesla (特斯拉) and PACCAR in the United States, Volvo (沃尔沃) in Sweden, and Daimler Truck in Germany.
Zhen Cong, managing partner of Skyview Fund, stated: "Skyview focuses on investing in hard technology tracks. The forward design of pure electric heavy-duty trucks is a key area of Skyview’s layout and represents industry trends. At present, the penetration rate of electirc heavy truck is less than 5%, and there is huge room for growth. Unlike other brands' transitional design schemes of 'replacing oil with electricity', the products of Zeron are completely forward designed, thus possessing unique advantages from other brands.”
This round of financing for Zeron was exclusively invested by Skyview Fund (天善资本) and LCIG (联想创投), with follow-on investments from Xinyi Capital (新宜资本), Hina Group (汉能投资) acted as the financial advisor. This round of financing funds will mainly be used for the continuous investment and construction in mass production of the first batch of models, research and development of core subsystems, research on autonomous driving algorithms, and talent recruitment.