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jia haonan sent from fujia temple

smart car reference | public account ai4auto

the l4 driverless car company has been in business for 11 years and its valuation has reached 30 billion. it has both technology and implementation.

although the results are not very impressive, there are still giants who are optimistic about it and are willing to provide financial support or even take over.

this is a very good situation for any entrepreneur.

butceo of l4 unicorn motional has decided to leave。

ceo of 30 billion self-driving company flees

motional also announced new l4 progress and plans at ces earlier this year, revealing at the time that it would further expand cooperation with hyundai kia and deliver a robotaxi fleet in 2025.

but in may, news of a sudden change came out: the entire company laid off 40% of its employees, and all l4 businesses, including operations and r&d, were stopped.

this message was sent by ceo Karl Iagnemmai posted it myself, and the wording at the time was "large-scale deployment of self-driving cars is a future goal, not a present one", so layoffs are needed...

unexpectedly, a few months later, the ceo also left.

Motionaljust released an announcement,karl iagnemma quits as ceo, transferred to the companysenior strategic advisor。

the ceo position will be held by the former cto Laura Majortake over.

let me introduce you briefly. karl iagnemma is from motional.founder and ceo, the undisputed core soul of the company, and also a veteran technical expert in the field of driverless cars and robotics.

iagnemma graduated from mit and studied in emilio frazzoli's robotics lab. he is currently the chief scientist of mit's department of mechanical engineering and the associate editor of ieee transactions on robotics and journal of field robotics.

in 2007, karl iagnemma and his team from the mit robotics laboratory participated indarpa autonomous driving challenge——the starting point and origin of the global autonomous driving industry. many star teams, including google waymo, came from here.

the theme of the 2007 darpa challenge isautonomous driving in urban scenariosthat year, more than 30 teams signed up for the competition, but only six teams successfully completed the competition. the mit team led by karl iagnemma was one of them and won fourth place. iagnemma also drafted the academic report of the darpa urban scene challenge.

as long as such a veteran and technical expert in autonomous driving is still in the position of ceo, the turbulence and twists and turns experienced by the company can be interpreted as "adjustments", but his direct withdrawal may have an impact on motional far beyond the technical level.

although there is also the role of "consultant", generally speaking, this is almost a common transition method in non-violent breakups.

it is also rare for a ceo, a founding ceo of a company valued at 30 billion, to suddenly pass away before the company even goes public.

it's strange, there must be something wrong that hasn't been made public yet.

the company worth 30 billion is no longer wanted. why?

although motional is not as high-profile and eye-catching as other driverless car companies that emerged from the darpa challenge, it has the support of academic giants such as iagnemma and has always been a recognized and valued l4 player in the industry.

in 2013, iagnemma and his lab mentor emilio frazzoli founded a self-driving car startupNutonomy, and inin 2016, it was the first to start providing robotaxi services in singapore——it was a huge success at the time.

in 2017, nutonomy was acquired by delphi for $450 million and merged with another cmu-derived startup, ottomatika, with iagnemma still in charge.

delphi was then split into delphi technologies and aptiv, and aptiv, which is responsible for the hardware and software of autonomous vehicles, took away the resources of these two companies.

in 2019, aptiv approached hyundai motor group, and the two parties agreed to jointly establish motional in a 50:50 ratio, with aptiv providing people and technology and hyundai mainly providing funding.

so iagnemma and his core team at nutonomy became motional.

the above can be seen asthe first stage of motional's development: the founding of an l4 company by a veteran in driverless cars brings its own halo and has received support from giant tier 1 companies and large car companies.

during this period, motional's technology and l4 business were remarkable. in addition to its blockbuster success in singapore in 2016, it launched the robotaxi service in las vegas in 2018, and has received more than 130,000 orders so far, transporting more than hundreds of thousands of passengers.

motional has also partnered with food delivery platform uber eats to deliver food to more than 20 merchants in los angeles, which is an unmanned delivery service.

this l4 operation has been maintained steadily for nearly 4 years, which can be seen as motionalthe second stage of development: crisis gradually brewing under stability。

because the implementation of motional cannot be called commercialization: the ride is free, the delivery is free, and it is unclear when the charging permit will be obtained. at the same time, there are human safety officers.

all losses have been borne by the two shareholders behind the scenes, hyundai and aptiv.

the financial supervisory service of south korea once disclosed that from 2020 to 2022, motional's operating losses reached us$1.154 billion (about rmb 8.34 billion), and hyundai group's losses reached us$316 million (about rmb 2.28 billion).

and in aptiv's annual financial report, due to the increasing expected equity losses brought by motional, the expected loss in 2024 will reach approximately us$340 million (approximately rmb 2.46 billion).

at the same time, aptiv's main business itself is not going well. in the financial report at the beginning of the year, it lowered its full-year revenue forecast from us$21.3 billion to us$21.9 billion to us$20.85 billion to us$21.45 billion.

l4 driverless cars cannot obtain toll collection permits, safety officers cannot be removed, and the financial backers behind them are not as strong as google... and in today's environment, it is almost impossible for a pure l4 story to raise funds.

at the beginning of the year, motional's crisis finally broke out: aptiv, the original organizer,first of all, i decided not to play., shares were sold to hyundai of south korea.

the specific process is a bit complicated: hyundai first invested us$475 million in motional, diluting aptiv's shareholding ratio to about 44%. hyundai then acquired 11% of aptiv's common stock. from this, we can also know that motional's latest valuation is us$4.07 billion (about rmb 29.41 billion).

however, hyundai is willing to take over motional and raise its valuation to 30 billion, but there are conditions:

lay off 40% of employees and stop all l4 operations and r&d. this includes robotaxi, unmanned logistics vehicles in north america, and robotaxi developed for hyundai, which are no longer being produced.

the next stage of motional's development will be entirely led by south korea's hyundai motor.

for the founder and ceo who has been involved in the founding of motional, such a future is highly uncertain: because the probability of overlap between the way car companies want to achieve autonomous driving and the l4 ideals of technology giants is not high.

the ceo's "escape" happened in such a context where both internal and external problems were unresolved.

as for hyundai motor, after many twists and turns, it finally has its own autonomous driving r&d team - butit took four years and nearly $1 billion to get to the starting line where china and the united states were five years ago.，and still failed to retain the core technical experts。

only koreans themselves know whether it is worth it or not.

it is difficult for the veterans of autonomous vehicles to start l4 businesses

in fact, the current situation of the first wave of autonomous driving entrepreneurs and practitioners, including karl iagnemma, who made a name for themselves at darpa, does not seem to be very good.

aurora founder chris urmson is still struggling to commercialize driverless trucks. since selling autonomous driving kits didn't work, he is now trying to operate his own fleet.

the "driverless car thief" lewandowski retreated to closed scenes such as mines, trying to use l4 technology to reduce the dimension of attack.

sebastian thrun, who first participated in the establishment of waymo, has successively founded l4 company voyage and flying car company, but none of them have been successful...

bryan saleskyArgothe script is almost identical to motional. volkswagen and ford were originally optimistic about the company and made bets on it, but later both decided to stop investing because of the reason that "it cannot provide value to users in the short term."

most of the pioneers of driverless cars who came out of darpa saw the opportunity of l4 and devoted themselves to l4, but judging from the development in recent years, the l2 route is booming and l4 has encountered a bottleneck.

in other words, in the current autonomous driving implementation cycle, car companies backed by industries, users and large amounts of capital have won over l4 driverless car companies in the battle for the right to speak.