Fremont California-based global autonomous driving technology company, Pony.ai recently announced that it will be entering into a strategic partnership and a joint venture with SANY Heavy Truck, which is a subsidiary of SANY heavy industry, China’s heavy equipment manufacturer and claimed as the third largest heavy equipment manufacturer globally.
“SANY has industry-leading heavy truck manufacturing technology and is pioneering the architecture of ‘new energy’ heavy trucks, intelligent network connections, and other key areas,” said James Peng, Pony.ai’s co-founder and CEO. “Integrating Pony.ai’s core autonomous driving technologies with the capabilities of SANY enables our joint venture to create a successful intelligent truck and logistics ecosystem for L4 autonomous trucking.”
“This partnership between SANY and Pony.ai is the ultimate collaboration between truck ‘body’ and truck ‘brain’ and thus makes it possible to mass produce high-level autonomous trucks. This partnership, which features complementary strengths and competitive advantages, will advance autonomous trucking and logistics well into the future and will lead to a safer, more efficient, intelligent logistics system,” said Liang Linhe, Chairman of SANY Heavy Truck.
Pony.ai has focused mainly on developing autonomous vehicles and driving software and hardware in-house. In the month of June, Pony.ai released its autonomous driving controller which was specifically designed for automotive mass production. The ADC is built on the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin SoC and can potentially enable the trucks produced by the joint venture. The first prototype of the autonomous truck has already begun road tests as well.
“The establishment of this new venture between Pony.ai and SANY is a significant milestone for the trucking industry,” said Rishi Dhall, vice president of Automotive, NVIDIA. “Powered by NVIDIA DRIVE, this next-generation of new-energy autonomous trucks will enable the delivery of goods to address ever-growing e-commerce demands without compromising safety and reliability, while reducing the transportation industry’s dependence on fossil fuels.”
