Four highlights behind Waymo's first round of $2.25 billion financing

[? A billion euro guide? ]? March 3, 2020? Waymo received the first round of financing of US$ 2.25 billion with a contract of RMB 654.38+05.6 billion. This is also the first financing since Waymo invested 10 in the field of autonomous driving. After this financing, the game between China Autopilot Company and Waymo will be more intense.

Waymo's first external investment was mainly made of silver? Lake (Silver Lake Capital), Canadian Pension Plan Investment Committee and Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund Mu Balada are the leaders, and other investors include auto parts supplier Magna? International (Magna) and Anderson? Holovitz, auto retail giant AutoNation and, of course, Google's parent company Alphabet? .

This new investment will be used for staff recruitment, technology development and global operation. Affected by the Fed's interest rate cut and Waymo's financing incident, Google's share price fluctuated by 4.78% in a single day, with an after-hours market value of $954.78+06 billion.

On March 2, 2020, Google's market value (US Eastern Time)

John, CEO of Waymo Krafcik? It is also announced that Silver Lake and Canada Pension Fund will be on the board of directors of the company. Although Waymo received the first round of financing, Google did not announce the valuation of the company after financing. However, judging from the amount of the first round of financing, Waymo's current valuation is likely to exceed Morgan Stanley's valuation of 20 19 105 billion US dollars.

Yiou believes that Waymo obtained this round of large-scale financing mainly because the realization of Waymo has begun.

Compared with carpooling, the cost advantage of self-driving taxis is very obvious. This is a classic case of technology/capital intensive business model replacing labor intensive model. At present, the price of a 7-mile self-driving taxi trip is about $8.75, which is only half the price of travel companies such as Uber and Didi, so ARS can quickly occupy market share.

According to the request? Alpha predicts that there will be 30,000 self-driving service vehicles in the United States in 20021year. Based on 50 paid trips per day, the cost of each trip is about $8.75, and each ARS vehicle will run for 350 days every year. According to this valuation model, each ARS vehicle is expected to generate about $65,438+050,000 annually, and the entire American ARS market will generate more than $4.5 billion.

American ARS market forecast

With the continuous improvement of the production capacity of self-driving cars and the rapid growth of driving mileage, by the end of the first phase in 2025, the United States will use about 750,000 self-driving cars to provide ars services in the United States, generating nearly $654.38+000 billion in revenue. At this time, ARS will seriously erode the carpooling market, which is why Uber and Didi must enter autonomous driving if they want to survive. At present, Waymo has occupied the first-Mover advantage, and its commercial operation is far ahead of all autonomous driving companies. It is not surprising to get high financing this time.

Based on the above, Yiou has the following four points in this round of financing.

First, Waymo two major scenarios: automatic driving+freight distribution

As of now, Waymo? Driver has traveled 20 million miles on public roads in 25 cities and 65.438+000 billion miles in the simulation, which is far ahead in the field of autonomous driving, and even the second-ranked general Cruise is hard to match.

Waymo two scenarios: automatic driving+freight distribution

Needless to say, Waymo's self-driving rental business is recognized as a global leader. Waymo？ One is the world's first self-driving ride service application, which serves thousands of customers in Arizona and provides thousands of completely unmanned services in the high-speed mixed-use market larger than San Francisco.

Waymo？ One now has more than 600 cars for users to use, but Google did not disclose the total number of passengers it serves. Waymo revealed in February 20 19 that more than 1500 people use the self-driving taxi service every month. Since the plan was launched on 20 17, the total journey has exceeded 654.38 million.

It is worth noting that Waymo officially announced the freight related plan and will start testing self-driving trucks on the roads of two States in the United States-Waymo? Via

If the former self-driving companies in China can avoid the edge of self-driving taxis, it is inevitable to start full-line competition now. Domestic companies that focus on freight auto-driving leasing, such as Tucson Future, Carriage Technology and White Rhino, will have a more severe living environment.

TuSimple's current self-driving freight test in the United States is mainly in Arizona and Texas, 20 19? 5? In May this year, Tucson announced a cooperation with the United States Postal Service (UPS) to surpass the postal service center in Phoenix, Arizona and the distribution center in Dallas, Texas. 1600? Provide freight service on the 2000-kilometer transportation line.

Waymo has been learning how to drive large class 8 trucks since 20 17, and is currently testing its truck fleet in California and Arizona, and will soon expand to Texas and New Mexico. In addition, Waymo will extend the Waymo driver to help local delivery in towns.

Waymo？ pass

Second, the world's first L4 self-driving car factory completed the first delivery.

Since April 20 19, Waymo announced that it will cooperate with Magna and American Axle Manufacturing Company (American? Axle&Manufacturing cooperated to build the world's first factory for mass production of L4 self-driving cars in Detroit, Michigan. Waymo has delivered the first batch of cars (electric cars and 8 trucks), which have new and more powerful computing power and perception, and are integrated with the fifth generation hardware. This indicates that Waymo's self-driving vehicles have achieved initial mass production, which will further promote Waymo's commercial deployment capability.

Waymo is preparing to significantly expand its business scale in the coming months. Its fleet will add 62,000 Chrysler Pacifica cars and sign an agreement with Jaguar Land Rover to equip its system with 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace electric SUVs by 2020.

Third, the cost of lidar is reduced by half, and its performance is "unparalleled"

At present, one of the most important hardware devices for autonomous driving is lidar. The long-term and short-term research and development of laser radar started by Waymo at 20 1 1 finally paid off. When most autonomous driving companies are limited by the cost of lidar, the cost of lidar developed by Waymo has been greatly reduced, and it was taken as a separate business branch in March 20 19.

On March 4, 2020, Waymo officially released its fifth-generation Waymo? Drive, redesigned the hardware sensor package of the automatic driving system, such as lidar, camera, radar, etc., which simplified the design and manufacturing process. Not only is the cost only half that of the previous generation, but it is not as good as Waymo? Driver is one of the most powerful sensors, and it can also draw 3D pictures of the surrounding environment. It is the world's first self-driving imaging radar system, providing "unparalleled" resolution, range and field of vision, and can see the whole scene immediately.

The fifth generation Waymo? drive

Traditional automotive radar can track moving objects, while Waymo's new imaging radar has higher resolution and enhanced signal processing ability, which can better detect and track moving objects that hardly move or stop.

At present, Waymo has manufactured the first batch of new generation sensors and integrated them into Jaguar? I-PACE platform, and has completed comprehensive module-level and system-level tests to ensure that the next-generation hardware can withstand all kinds of roads (from stormy weather and salt fog roads to extreme high temperature and dusty)? .

Double the number of employees.

In the staff structure of way mo 2065 438+09, about two-thirds of the employees are engineers and technicians, which reflects the company's emphasis on research and development. In contrast, the scale of other departments is generally small.

20 19 Waymo employee structure

That? According to a recent report of Information, in 20 19 years, the number of employees in Waymo almost doubled, from 950 to 1500.

Judging from the current post demand of Waymo in official website, the post demand of software engineering far exceeds that of other posts, which also shows that Waymo has invested more labor costs in the fifth-generation autonomous driving system, and Waymo is also a "startup company" with technical talents as the mainstay.

Waymo recruitment demand in 2020

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At present, it seems that autonomous driving at home and abroad has started the next wave of enthusiasm. At this time, Waymo has also started full competition with autonomous driving companies in other regions.

Borrow the evaluation of an industry insider: "There is only one problem now. Does China Autopilot still have a chance to play a few rounds with Waymo like Didi and Uber? "

There are great opportunities as well as greater challenges. At this time, domestic self-driving enterprises should not only hold a group to keep warm, but also become partners who don't advance or retreat, which is likely to increase some chances of winning in this game.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.