Globally, the United States has been in the leading position in artificial intelligence technology and application for a long time, and the development of driverless driving originated in Europe and America earlier. However, judging from the development of self-driving enterprises in the United States in recent years, layoffs and resignations have occurred frequently, and even more self-driving enterprises have gone bankrupt.
According to the new strategic low-speed driverless industry research institute, in the past six months, many companies in the American driverless industry have announced a large number of layoffs and filed for bankruptcy, including Ibeo, the originator of lidar, and Embark Trucks, a self-driving truck company.
Embark Trucks: from valuation of 5 billion to near bankruptcy only16 months
Embark was founded in 2016 and headquartered in San Francisco. It was co-founded by Alex Rodrigues and Brandon Moak. It is understood that Embark’s initial plan is to build a self-driving shuttle bus for university campuses. Soon after, the team began to turn to self-driving trucks applied to highways.
The market for self-driving trucks has broad prospects, and Embark has quickly gained the favor of venture capitalists. During the period from 2016 to 2019, Embark raised funds including: 2 million USD seed round financing led by Maven Ventures, 15 million USD Series A financing led by DCVC, 30 million USD Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital and 70 million USD Series C financing led by Tiger Global.
In 2021, Embark began to seek listing. In the transaction report, Embark said that they plan to realize the operation of self-driving trucks in the southern industrial zone of the United States from 2024. In November 2021, Embark successfully went public with a market value of about 5 billion US dollars and raised about 614 million US dollars.
However, this 7-year-old enterprise has never really started its business, let alone generate revenue or make profits. According to foreign media reports, Embark has announced the end of its operations and laid off most of its employees.
Locomation: nearly 70% of employees have been laid off, and the product has not been put into commercial operation so far.
Locomation originated from the National Robotics Engineering Center of Carnegie Mellon University and was founded by five co-founders in 2018. Locomation is developing the formation driving technology of heavy trucks-ARC Autonomous Relay Convoy. This technology allows a pilot truck with a safe driver to lead a second truck, in which the driver can rest or do other work.
In February this year, Locomation failed to raise additional investment capital, which led to layoffs. It was once rumored by the outside world as bankruptcy. In this regard, Locomation denied the media reports about the closure, but admitted that it did fire most non-engineering personnel. It is not clear how many of the 122 employees estimated by Locomation are facing dismissal. It is reported that there are 80 employees, most of whom left on February 24th.
?etin Meri?li, co-founder and CEO of Locomation, said that the company will not close down, but it has indeed reduced most non-engineering personnel in the face of economic headwinds.
For the development of the company, Finch Fulton, vice president of policy and strategy of Locomation, said that the company had recruited many smart employees, practiced strategic solutions and had some customers, but now the result was that it could not raise funds and the products could not be put into commercial operation, so it was necessary to make this decision.
Quanergy: Apply for bankruptcy liquidation and seek maximum value.
Founded in 2012, Quanergy is one of the first companies to develop LiDAR devices for automotive applications. Quanergy’s mission is to create intelligent LIDAR solutions with powerful functions and reasonable prices for Internet of Things applications to improve people’s experience and safety.
In December, 2022, Quanergy announced that the company started the orderly sale procedure of its business. In order to promote the sale and maximize the value, the Company applied for protection to the United States Delaware District Bankruptcy Court ("Bankruptcy Court") in accordance with Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Law ("Bankruptcy Law"), and intended to sell its business in accordance with Article 363 of the Bankruptcy Law.
Before submitting the bankruptcy protection case, the board of directors and management evaluated a series of strategic options to maximize the value of all stakeholders. The company also reduced operating expenses and settled a major patent lawsuit with Velodyne. Now with the protection provided by Bankruptcy Law, the company intends to expand its marketing efforts of potential buyers interested in specific business sectors or assets, and continue to seek continuous sales of business.
The company is expected to continue to operate in the process of bankruptcy protection and seek to complete the rapid sales process with the approval of the bankruptcy court. In order to help fund and protect its operation, Quanergy intends to use the available cash on hand and normal operating cash flow to fund the operation and normal costs after the application.
Argo AI: layoffs are closed, and investors "start a new stove" to receive.
In October 2022, Ford officially issued a statement: Argo AI, an autonomous driving company jointly invested by Ford and Volkswagen, will be closed and dissolved, and employees and some parts will be accepted by Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen Company respectively.
Argo AI, an autonomous driving technology company from Google’s unmanned vehicle team, was founded in 2016. A year later, it was acquired by Ford for $1 billion and introduced Volkswagen investment in 2019. Argo AI, backed by two mountains, can be said to be a star unicorn in the field of autonomous driving.
The valuation was as high as $7 billion, and the accumulated gold was $2.6 billion. The team size was as high as 2,000. However, it is such a potential L4 autonomous driving technology company that layoffs and bankruptcies are reported, and after the dissolution, Argo AI’s employees and technology may be taken over by Ford and Volkswagen.
So far, Ford has indeed done this. Just last week, Ford Motor announced that it would set up Latitude AI, a wholly-owned subsidiary, and recruited hundreds of employees for the new company from Argo AI, which it had previously invested in.
According to Ford’s statement, Latitude, located in Pittsburgh, the former home of Argo, will focus on developing an autonomous driving system for millions of cars with hands-free, eyes-off-the-road. Ford said that Latitude will focus on the automatic technology to assist human drivers in the short term, and will not completely replace human drivers with autonomous driving technology.
Velodyne: completely quit after merging with Ouster.
In 2016, Velodyne Lidar Division was separated from Velodyne Acoustics Company and became an independent company. In order to get the goods first, Ford and Baidu jointly invested $150 million in Velodyne Lidar Company. Since then, Velodyne has successively signed contracts with companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai Mobius and Boston Dynamics.
In the laser radar industry, Velodyne has always been in the leading position as the first laser radar in the world, and considers itself as "the only laser radar enterprise that can mass-produce wire harnesses." As more and more enterprises poured into the laser radar track, the products became more and more involved, and Velodyne began to decline.
Especially in terms of price. Velodyne mainly sells 64-line, 32-line and 16-line lidar, and the official prices are $80,000, $40,000 and $8,000 respectively. Because Velodyne chose the agency mode in the sales mode, the buyer also needs to pay taxes and agents’ service fees. As a result, the final price of a Velodyne64 line lidar was nearly 700,000 yuan. Other companies can provide more cost-effective products.
In February this year, Velodyne said that it had successfully completed the "merger of equals" with the lidar manufacturer OUSTer, which took effect on February 10th. The company will keep the name of Ouster and continue to trade under the company’s stock code "Oust". This also means that Velodyne has launched the historical stage.
Although autonomous driving start-ups have fallen in the past six months, the exploration of autonomous driving in the United States is still overweight. According to foreign media reports, the American Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association released a policy framework on March 1, outlining the key priorities of federal autonomous vehicle legislation and supervision.
The framework proposed by the association includes several suggestions to the US Congress and the Department of Transportation to guide the federal government to take corresponding actions and promote the deployment and commercialization of self-driving cars in the United States.
Jeff Farrah, executive director of the association, said: "Self-driving cars are being tested and operated in various States in the United States, taking passengers and goods where they need to go. The United States is currently the leader in autonomous driving technology, but other countries are also making rapid progress. " Members of the association include Aurora, Cruise, Ford, Volkswagen, Waymo and Zoox.
With the continuous promotion of China’s position in the global political arena, China’s scientific research achievements in the field of autonomous driving have attracted worldwide attention. In 2023, China and the United States will have a new round of science and technology competition, and the industry will wait and see.
