Tony Han, Founder and CEO of WeRide (NASDAQ:WRD), a portfolio company of Qiming Venture Partners, was interviewed by Bloomberg, a premier global financial media outlet, on The China Show. During the interview, he shared insights into the company's global commercialization strategy, competitive approach, and future development plans.
The following is the edited transcript of the interview.
Bloomberg: Chinese self-driving company WeRide reported earnings recently. It was actually their first earnings release as a listed company on the NASDAQ. We saw the share price really rising intraday closing up 13% on March 14th. So, an interesting earnings release and certainly one, even with those sorts of softer or weaker spots, still was interpreted very positively by a lot of analysts and traders. Let's get more now with the WeRide Founder and CEO. This is Tony Han joining us this morning for an exclusive interview.
Tony, I want to get your reaction to those numbers because as it said, there were some softer spots. But still we saw a positive market reaction. So, what's your reaction in particular?
Tony Han: Over the past year and the first quarter, we do have some kind of increasing expenses. But overall, the technology has progressed very well and we are expanding to 30 cities in 10 countries and our Robotaxi has been announced (that) by the mid of 2025 we will have 50 Robotaxis running on the Uber platform in Abu Dhabi. And so there is lots of progress. I think that's the exciting progress in both R&D and the operation, and in the sales numbers, especially for robotaxi and new products. All of these factors combining together give us a very good performance in the stock market.
Bloomberg: Can you share some more details on the expansion? Because just to give people some context here, speaking about the Robotaxi fleet specifically, you've got around 400 vehicles in that, 300 roughly are in mainland of China. The rest are abroad. Lots of those are expected to be, at least in the UAE. But where would you go, in the UAE or in the Middle East more broadly? And where would you also go next in other international markets?
Tony Han: So, in UAE, we actually have already started to operate in the major area in Abu Dhabi like the Yas Island, Saadiyat Island and the route through Zayed International Airport, and many key areas in Abu Dhabi. We also started our Robobus in trial operation in Barcelona. And also, we have our Robotaxi and Robobus operation in Zurich Airport and also Robotaxi operation in Zurich. And we will have more to come maybe in Japan, and also in France. So, there are lots of cities we are trying to explore right now.
We believe one unique thing of WeRide is (that) WeRide is a global company, and we try to expand our autonomous driving service to the global market. And we are building a very strong business development team, very strong sales network, and we are trying to build very general autonomous driving technology to support the operation and service globally. So, that's roughly our rough plan about expansion in the global market.
Bloomberg: Tony, I want to pick up on that point about your expansion in the global market. I did see that pedestrians and riders were able to ride one of your minibuses for free in Barcelona last week. That was a trial of the Robobus that you mentioned just then. So, beyond the Robotaxis, what is the strategy and what are the targets for expanding vehicles in the minibus area, in the van area? And where are the markets that you're focusing for those sorts of vehicles?
Tony Han: I think, for the market that we try to focus, that is mainly for some markets that are short of labors. We are trying to solve some society issues. For some markets that there is an aging society and short of labors, and you want to try to use the machine to fill the gap between the actual demand and the shortage of labor. So that's what we are trying to do.
So, besides Robotaxi, our Robosweeper is trying to fill the gap between the shortage of the manpower and the high demand in sanitation industry. For Robovan, (it's the) same thing for logistic delivery. And for the minibus in public transportation, in some European countries, they are short of bus drivers. So, we will focus on these markets that have some shortage, especially driver shortage problem and we try to solve it. We want to supply a solution with much more economic efficiency. That's a much safer solution.
And if you sit in our Robo-minibus, you can feel (that) the smoothness of this Robobus is kind of even better than a human bus driver. It feels like a human bus driver. You never feel like this kind of motion sickness or jerkiness, like you usually experience in a bus. In minibus, it's just like you're sitting in a private cabinet and driven by your private chauffer, and it's very smooth and the view is fantastic. You're just like sitting there. So, I think, I believe with all of this, we can supply a very good user experience to our users.
Bloomberg: I mean, you talk about places where there's aging populations or maybe a shortage of labor supply. And of course, you mentioned Japan as well. So, this is clearly going to be a key market. But, I want to talk about that business model that you have as well. Because the approach of WeRide is to find local partners in each market to sell the vehicles, charge a fixed service fee and have a revenue sharing agreement in place. You already have this partnership with Uber in the Middle East. Would you look to also partner with Uber in Japan?
Tony Han: Oh, that's a very good question. So basically, our philosophy or methodology is (that) we want to closely work with our partners. But for the expansion, we don't want to become dominant. We just want to be a kind of autonomous driving technology and the transportation power supplier. So, we want to very well align with Uber's expansion in Japan. But that's not saying we are not doing Japan market. If Uber don't have a very eminent plan to expand in Japan, we can also find some local partners. Actually, for minibus, we have already started.
And there are several, I would say, several dimensions about expansion. One is like geographically, you know how to expand. The other one is about products. For example, in Europe, minibus is people's favorite product, you know. Because people like to take public transportation in Europe. So we focus our minibus in European market. In Japan, we are also starting the market. That's how we expand.
Bloomberg: But going to Japan in particular, I'm interested because Uber is in Japan. So, that would be a natural partner for you. How though are you also gonna be going up against competitors in this space? Because Waymo, for instance, that's the subsidiary of Alphabet, also has its own autonomous driving fleet. They're also looking at expanding into Japan. So, with your business model, how do you compete with names like Waymo, to be the partner of companies like Uber?
Tony Han: Okay. I think our main strategy is trying to expand our Robotaxi service in a very efficient and in a very stable way. And good thing to team up with Uber is that Uber has already had a very strong network of human driven taxi. The thing is (that) when you adopt autonomous driving technology, for example, if you want to take over one city and have a very good estimate of time of arrival, you have to deploy at least 1000 or sometimes 5000 cars in that single city. That costs a huge burden.
On the other hand, the collaboration pattern of Uber and WeRide is (that) we roll out the Robotaxi in a hybrid mode. That is (that) some of the orders request will be fulfilled by Robotaxi, and some of orders will be fulfilled by the human drivers. But to users, it's kind of a very smooth and transparent experience. I think this kind of combination give us a very strong advantage over our competitors. To my best knowledge, in the global market, the combination of WeRide and Uber is the first of the case. No othercompetitor has ever done. So, we look forward to keeping this kind of competition advantages.
Bloomberg: One of the ways that of course you can compete is on price. I mean, on competition around price, I mean, I know that in the domestic market as well, you're looking at having dynamic pricing, which I kind of understood as you would be looking at offering discounts. How much cheaper can you go? Not just against names like Waymo, but also the competitors within China. I mean it's already quite a competitive landscape.
Tony Han: So, one strategy of WeRide is we don't want to compete for the price. Frankly speaking, I think, there may be several competitors. Actually that's not many, only very very few competitors in China can supply reliable and efficient Robotaxi, not that many, although many competitors claim that they have Robotaxi fleet. But if you look at it, they are only at most 3 competitors can do Robotaxi operations in China.
Among all of these, I think WeRide with its strong technology, strong record, so far, for these 400 Robo-vehicles, we have 0 regulatory discipline due to our system failure. That's an extraordinary number. We are so proud of our safety record.
WeRide has 5 autonomous driving permits, driverless autonomous driving operation permits in 5 countries. There's only one company that has got permits from 5 countries. So, for that kind of competition, we will focus on the reliability and experience.
And I personally don't think autonomous driving, or Robotaxi, or the relevant product has come to a competition for us to compete against price. It hasn't arrived to that stage yet. I believe the final winner will be the winner who can supply the best quality of the service, not simply the lowest price.
Source: Bloomberg
