On December 11, AION and Pony.ai signed a strategic cooperation agreement at GAC Group's headquarters to co-develop competitive and mass-produced Robotaxi models and accelerate commercialization of fully autonomous Robotaxi. Ma Shu, Deputy Secretary-general of the People’s Government of Guangzhou Municipality, Chen Jianhua, Chief economist of the Bureau of Industry and Information Technology of Guangzhou, Feng Xingya, President of GAC Group, Yu Jun, Vice President of GAC Group, Peng Jun, co-founder and CEO of Pony.ai, and Wang Haojun, CFO of Pony.ai, witnessed the signing. The agreement was signed by Zhang Xiong, Vice president of AION, and Lou Tiancheng, co-founder and CTO of Pony.ai.

 

 

According to the agreement, the two sides will co-develop a fully redundant, mass-produced Robotaxi vehicle platform by leveraging AION's global model and Pony. ai's seventh-generation autonomous driving software and hardware system. Concerted efforts are being made in R&D of autonomous driving unit, vehicle production, chassis redundancy safety design to launch AION Robotaxi on a scale of thousands units. The first fleet is expected to launch in the Greater Bay Area by 2025, with plans to expand to more regions and countries in the future.   

Benefited from AION's advanced intelligent manufacturing technologies and comprehensive EV+ICV R&D capabilities as well as Pony.ai's competencies on L4 autonomous driving and Robotaxi operation, the partnership aims to elevate autonomous driving technology to a new commercial heights, promote intelligent mobility adoption, lead industrial transformation, and shape a futuristic transportation ecosystem. The AION global model applied in this cooperation will also promote autonomous driving technologies to go global.