GAC’s Ride-Hailing Platform ONTIME Bags Over $152M in A-Round Financing

ONTIME, also known as Ruqi Mobility, is a Chinese ride-hailing platform operating under automobile giant GAC Group. The firm announced on Tuesday its completion of an A round of financing totaling over 1 billion yuan ($152.6 million), led by GAC Group and followed up by Pony.ai, WeRide, SPARX, Pilgrim Partners Asia and some Guangzhou-based state-owned industrial investment institutions.

ONTIME started operations in June 2019, and its business include ride-hailing, enterprise use, after-sales services and robotaxis. At present, it has opened operation services in Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhuhai, Shenzhen and Dongguan.

After completing this round of financing, ONTIME will set up a robotaxi fleet with a scale of over 200 vehicles, putting it into demonstration operation this year. It also aims to build a vehicle-to-everything (V2X) fleet with a scale of over 1,000 vehicles, and fully promote the building of an autonomous driving system including operations, data and supervision platforms.

“In the past, the autonomous driving industry focused on improving the system algorithm capability and vehicle hardware. With the development of technology, the focus began to shift to autonomous driving operation technology,” said Jiang Hua, CEO of ONTIME, adding that robotaxis must operate through the mobility platform to provide services. “For this reason, two leading autonomous driving tech firms have chosen to strategically invest in ONTIME.”

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Among these firms, WeRide is a leading L4 autonomous driving tech firm and has started operations and road tests in 15 cities around the world. Pony.ai also has achieved L4 autonomous driving technology and solutions, and its robotaxi services have been deployed in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in China, as well as in California in the US since 2018.