Zero One Auto announces completion of 500 million yuan financing

This week, Zero One Auto, a leading new energy heavy-duty truck and intelligent driving company, announced another significant news after a year, completing a 500 million RMB Series A funding round, injecting vitality into the recently sluggish financing market. This round was co-led by leading autonomous driving company Momenta, Xinghang Venture Capital, and Chentao Capital, with participation from Guofa Wenxin, Loudong Industrial Fund, Deying Capital, Xinjing Fuying, Yuanjing Capital, Caitong Capital, Huoshui Capital, and existing shareholder Tianshan Capital.

Founded in 2022, Zero One Auto focuses on two core businesses: native end-to-end autonomous driving software and hardware development and full-stack proprietary new energy intelligent heavy-duty truck technology. Since May of last year, Zero One Auto has launched two new energy heavy-duty trucks, the "Jingzhe" and "Xiaoman," equipped with a fully self-developed electric drive axle and three-source heat pump system. Since then, Zero One Auto has launched more targeted derivative models tailored to different market needs, continuously optimizing performance and reducing operating costs with a customer-centric approach. Zero One founder Huang Zehua attributes this rapid iteration capability to the company's extensive in-house technological research and development. To date, Zero One has delivered nearly 700 vehicles of its two models, with total operating mileage exceeding 25 million kilometers, placing it among the leading new heavy-duty truck companies. Notably, at the end of last year, Zhang Wei, former executive director of China National Heavy Duty Truck Group, joined Zero One, helping the company further strengthen its marketing channels and improve service quality, with significant results. Following Zero One's successful partner conference in March of this year, over 70 dealers joined the Zero One network within just three months, providing a boost to Zero One during a critical period of sales growth. Even more remarkable is that in regions such as Henan and Hebei, the repurchase rate for Zero One products has reached as high as 70%, fully demonstrating market recognition for its product quality and customer service. Furthermore, despite a lack of initial success in the first half of this year, Zero One, which pioneered the large-scale end-to-end autonomous driving (ZSD) technology last year, has made remarkable progress. It is reported that Zero One Automotive is steadily advancing the development of the industry's first single-stage, end-to-end, multimodal large-scale autonomous driving technology. The so-called "one-stage approach," as the name suggests, means the entire model is a cohesive whole, truly end-to-end technology. It simplifies the system, fully leveraging the advantages of end-to-end technology and thus achieving a higher ceiling. Multimodal large models can fully leverage the knowledge and generalization capabilities of large language models, effectively addressing the long-tail problem of autonomous driving and accelerating the mass production of driverless technology.
 
Secondly, since last year, Zero One has repeatedly emphasized the concept of "gradually advancing scenarios to make commercial vehicles the first step in the mass production of advanced intelligent driving." In line with the inherent characteristics of commercial vehicles, Zero One has consistently advocated starting with the smallest commercial scenarios and gradually advancing the commercialization of advanced autonomous driving through a path of closed, semi-closed, and open scenarios. This approach is insightful and rational in the current industry climate, where relevant departments are urgently calling for a cooling down of "autonomous driving" sentiment. "I have known Zehua for many years. He possesses both a keen foresight in advanced technologies and a deep respect for science and technology. This is one of the key factors that makes me optimistic about Zero One Auto," said Momenta CEO Cao Xudong. It's reported that vehicles equipped with Zero One's ZSD system will be delivered to a stainless steel factory in Yangjiang, Guangdong, for operational use in late July. "We highly recognize Zero One Auto's progress in its two core businesses, autonomous driving and complete vehicles. The combination of new energy trucks and autonomous driving represents a trillion-yuan market, and we believe Zero One will be a leader," said Lai Shengmin, General Manager of Xinghang Venture Capital. "New energy players are currently accumulating energy and are still some distance away from entering the market. Our goal this year is to catch up with traditional heavy-duty truck manufacturers in monthly sales by the end of the year. Regarding intelligent driving, we have longer-term goals and greater patience. We aim to implement our technology in more scenarios over the next three years, conducting more technological development and penetration, while always ensuring technological leadership and reliability." Huang Zehua expressed confidence in the next phase of the outlook, stating that Zero One Auto's future performance warrants continued attention from the industry and the market.