On February 28, Tony Han, Founder and CEO of Qiming Venture Partners' portfolio company WeRide (NASDAQ:WRD), participated in an exclusive interview with CNBC, a leading global financial news network. During the "Street Signs Asia" segment, he shared insights on WeRide's global commercialization strategy and the societal impact of autonomous driving technology.
The following is the edited transcript of the interview.
CNBC: Tony Han, Founder and CEO of WeRide, joins us now for CNBC exclusive interview and we are very glad that he could make the time to be with us this morning. Tony, thank you very much. Please explain the expansion strategy and what you hope to achieve from it.
Tony Han: The collaboration with beti, Macif and Renault Group is a kind of unprecedented collaboration. And this is to my best knowledge, the first fully operational high-level autonomous driving shuttle deployed in a daily base. And to us, this is our first step to the European region. And also, I do believe this is a great movement because, think about the main purpose of developing autonomous driving technology, (it) is trying to make transportation safer, more efficient and more comfortable. if you have ever taken a ride in our autonomous driving bus, it's like a private cabinet and it's very comfortable. We want to really revolutionize the public transportation. It not only stands for economically efficient but should also stand for very comfortable and much safer.
And we know Europe is currently an aging society and we are facing a bus driver shortage problem together. So, we want to use cutting-edge autonomous driving technology to make public transportation upgrade services for all human societies. Therefore, doing some business with autonomous driving technology and collaborating with beti, Macif and Renault Group becomes a great first step.
CNBC: Tony, you have partnered up with European companies in order to make these inroads into Europe. Some of the views out there that this is exactly how it's going to be is that we're going to see more companies across Europe and China partnering up and teaming up in order to address exactly what you're talking about. But I'm just wondering how you are navigating some of those challenges with regards to Europe and the pressure from the EU.
Tony Han：There're some stories I want to share with you. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but the light bulb is not only lighting (up) America but also lighting (up) the rest of the world. And you know, human society has experienced the World War. And I'm personally a pacifist and I think to navigate this kind of geopolitical issue in the current era, it's like we are facing together. To do business in any region like in European countries, in MENA countries, in southeast Asian countries, you have to comply with all addressable regulations and laws and also really contribute to the local society. That's our philosophy. We are doing business all over the world, but we do respect the local society, and want to help the economic development of the local society. The most important thing is that we want to make this very, very helpful autonomous driving technology available to the rest of the world.
CNBC: Tony, I just want to talk a little bit about NVIDIA's interest in your company. It’s not like they just came in a few weeks ago, but they have backed your business from the start. What have your discussions with Jensen Huang (Founder and CEO of NVIDIA) been in terms of this autonomous driving technology? And what's your pitch been to him and what's his expectation from your company in terms of where you want to take it?
Tony Han: I have been known Jensen since the beginning of this company in the year of 2017. At that time, I was at Silicon Valley. I think Jensen is a great entrepreneur, always pushing for the great technology.
At that time, WeRide is one of the best autonomous driving technology companies and we didn't have any actual real business. What we only had is our great technology. I think because of the advancement of our technology and our demonstration, and Jensen made his mind to support us. To us, we have a big dream to make this company a great company and we really want to revolutionize the transportation with autonomous driving technology. To my mind, I think driving is a tedious job. And it can be a hobby, but it shouldn't be a task. And replacing the tedious job with machine is what our researchers or entrepreneurs are trying to do. Therefore, I think we will continue pursuing excellence in technology and gradually make this technology available to the transportation business.
CNBC: So, driving may be a hobby, but for many emerging markets, it's a major source of employment. And so how do you think about that, the displacement of jobs that can lead to if more and more transportation vehicles become autonomous.
Tony Han: It's a great question. I'm so excited to answer this question. I think in the 21st century, one of the key questions to the philosophers is the relationship between Mankind and the machines, more specifically AI. And there are lots of jobs used to be taken by human being and solve the employment problem, and that will gradually be taken by AI or machines. But think about in history that's not the first time, like the programmable switch machine replaced the human operators and washing machines replaced laundry workers. Now I think for the mining business, they adopt technology a lot. I'll say it's called a migration or shift of human jobs.
To me, I don't want to be a taxi driver, if I have other choices. There are always other jobs available. And I think we should put resource, inject resource, put lots of efforts to find really more amicable and more enjoyable jobs for the working class. I think they are there, for example labelling business, elder care. Also, we want to do this gradually. The key problem for our society, in many aging societies, it's not because of jobs, but about the shortage of bus drivers or taxi drivers. So, we want to use technology, more specifically, autonomous driving technology to solve this problem.
CNBC: OK. Your big markets are China, the US, UAE and Singapore. That's where you hold driverless permits. How do we see growth playing out for your business and which are the key growth markets where you see linearity in growth?
Tony Han: So, basically all the aging societies, with a relatively high salary, I mean taxi driver salary. So basically these are our (targeting) markets. To do so, you have to really make your technology safer and make autonomous driving experience very comfortable. So that's what we're working hard on.
CNBC: Good stuff, Tony! Absolute pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much for your time and breaking that all down for us.
Source: CNBC
