"SHANGHAI. The island on which the robobuses drive and the robo street sweepers clean is located in the middle of the Pearl River. It is quiet and amazingly green here. Some of the fitter tech employees who work here manage to jog around the island twice in the morning. The robobuses, a little longer than a VW van but as high as a normal bus, are an experience for tourists, but also serve the regular public transport on the otherwise almost sleepy island. An autonomous vehicle also sweeps up the nonexistent dirt. But you wouldn't expect one of the more exciting stock market stories of this year to take place here, around a hundred kilometers upstream from Hong Kong, southeast of the city center of the Chinese megalopolis of Guangzhou.
But We Ride, the company behind the robovehicles, whose investors include the German Bosch Group, ventured onto the stock market in the USA at the end of October. It was one of the first major Chinese tech IPOs in three years. At the time, the Chinese authorities had cracked down on the IPO of Didi, the Chinese Uber equivalent, and that of the financial start-up Ant, sending shockwaves through the People's Republic's tech industry. The pandemic and geopolitical tensions with the USA, particularly on digital issues, did the rest.
But now smaller Chinese tech companies are gradually coming out of hiding again. The developers of autonomous cars and driver assistance systems in particular are making a name for themselves. Most of them need money and do not yet have a clear business model. But they have shown that they are at the forefront of technology.
The stock market euphoria that spread in the People's Republic at the end of September offers them a more favorable environment. The start-ups are among the fiercest competitors of Waymo, which belongs to the Google Group and operates robotaxis in the USA, and of Tesla, which recently announced robotaxis again.
The Chinese companies are active in a field that is entirely in line with the Beijing leadership's wishes. The Beijing leadership wants to be at the forefront of high technology internationally and sees the rise of the Chinese car industry as a political victory. The IPOs to date have been rather small. This means that the start-ups can stay under the radar of geopolitics, unlike the controversial online retailer Shein or the social network Tiktok with its Chinese parent company Bytedance, which are also flirting with IPOs in the West.
We Ride raised almost half a billion dollars in money from its IPO and other parallel share sales. The Bosch Group bought more than four-fifths of the shares in the actual IPO of 120 million dollars. After the IPO, the share price mainly moved sideways. At the beginning of this week, however, it rose by almost 50 percent. A spokeswoman did not want to comment on the reason for the sudden price fluctuation. The start-up was thus valued at more than six billion dollars on Tuesday. We Ride also develops software for robotaxi. But much more than other Chinese start-ups in the sector, it relies on larger vehicles such as buses and cleaning cars as well as cities and municipalities as customers.
Almost at the same time as We Ride - just not in New York, but in Hong Kong - another Chinese auto tech start-up with a large German stake went public. Horizon Robotics, in which VW has invested more than two billion dollars directly and through a joint venture, develops software for autonomous driving. The IPO brought in almost 700 million dollars. The company is valued at around seven billion dollars. In addition to VW, the Chinese tech heavyweights Alibaba, Baidu and the car companies SAIC and BYD are also among the investors. The company's shares have barely budged since the IPO. The price is almost exactly at the issue price.
Another company could soon join Horizon and We Ride. Pony AI, whose investors include Toyota and Neom from Saudi Arabia and which also operates robotaxis, is in the middle of preparing for an IPO in New York. The robotaxi start-up is aiming for a valuation of at least four billion dollars there.
In all three cases, these are speculative investments. As with the many dozens of electric car brands in the People's Republic, there are also countless developers of driver assistance systems and robotaxis. It is completely unclear whose technology will prevail. The systems with Huawei involvement or from VW partner Xpeng are considered particularly promising. Dozens of pilot tests in Chinese cities show that Beijing and provincial governments are also focusing on robotaxis after electric cars. The IPOs are offering investors a number of opportunities to participate. The success story of the Chinese electric car market leader BYD could be motivation enough." [1]
1. Sind Chinas Robotaxis das nächste BYD?: Zuletzt wagten sich einige chinesische Start-ups auf das Parkett / Waymo und Tesla bekommen Konkurrenz. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Frankfurt. 13 Nov 2024: 25.
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