Momenta Enters the Intelligent Heavy Truck Market and Leads a 500-Million-Yuan Financing Round for Lingyi Automobile | Exclusive Report by 36Kr

Text by | Li Anqi

Edited by | Li Qin

36Kr has exclusively learned that new energy heavy - truck manufacturer "Lingyi Auto" recently completed a Series A financing of 500 million yuan. This round of financing was jointly led by leading autonomous driving company Momenta, Xinghang Venture Capital, and Chentao Capital, with participation from Guofa Wenxin, Loudong Industry Fund, Deying Capital, Xinjing Fuying, Yuanjing Capital, Caitong Capital, Huoshui Capital, and existing shareholder Tianshan Capital.

It is reported that the funds from this round will be used for the mass production of a new - generation forward - developed platform and the large - scale implementation of driverless trucks.

Lingyi Auto was founded in April 2022 by Huang Zehua, the former co - founder of TuSimple, and Zhang Hongsong, the former general manager of Sinotruk and vice - president of Beiqi Foton Daimler. At the end of last year, Zhang Wei, the former executive director of CNHTC, officially joined Lingyi Auto, mainly responsible for marketing and sales.

When Huang Zehua left in 2021, it was the peak of TuSimple, and its stock price reached an all - time high. "When I was at TuSimple, in a sense, I was living in an ivory tower, with a touch of technological romanticism. But the real world is many times more complex and is not just made up of code," Huang Zehua recalled to 36Kr.

During his time at TuSimple, he saw that the challenge was that the traditional heavy - truck industry mainly focuses on supply - chain integration, while new energy and autonomous driving are completely new concepts. There is neither a mature and referable design nor a complete industrial chain. For example, some technical bugs in autonomous driving are due to the lack of better truck hardware support.

He realized that the vehicle hardware would be the key bottleneck restricting the development of truck autonomous driving technology.

Huang Zehua graduated with a master's degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University and has 8 years of R & D experience in computer vision. He loves adventure and started businesses in areas such as muscle - computing wristbands during his college years.

After joining TuSimple as a co - founder in 2015, Huang Zehua gradually shifted from being a computer - vision research scientist at the beginning to the fields of truck autonomous driving systems and vehicle hardware engineering. When he finally decided to start his own business, Huang Zehua chose to dive into a more "heavy" world - manufacturing new energy heavy trucks.

Image source: Lingyi Auto

Lingyi Auto's solution is to independently master the "body" and the "brain": it not only forward - develops a heavy - truck platform suitable for electrification and intelligence but also self - develops an autonomous driving technology stack for heavy - truck scenarios.

To tackle these two difficult tasks simultaneously, Lingyi Auto has assembled a cross - border team of more than 200 people. It first focuses on the core technologies of intelligent electric heavy trucks, including self - developed powertrains, vehicle thermal management, electronic and electrical architectures, networking, and intelligence.

After spending two years and investing 150 million yuan, Lingyi Auto launched its first - generation forward - developed intelligent heavy trucks, "Jingzhe" and "Xiaoman", in 2024. Huang Zehua told 36Kr that thanks to the many years of truck - manufacturing experience of co - founder Zhang Hongsong, Lingyi Auto was able to complete vehicle R & D with higher capital - utilization efficiency. "The supply chain provided great support in terms of early - stage mold costs and R & D iteration costs."

According to Huang Zehua, based on its self - developed electric drive axle technology, the new vehicles of Lingyi Auto have a power of 860 horsepower. In contrast, the power of traditional flagship fuel heavy trucks is mostly only over 600 horsepower, and most "fuel - to - electric" trucks only have 500 horsepower. Thanks to the self - development of an efficient core powertrain, the overall vehicle cost of Lingyi Auto is basically on par with that of "fuel - to - electric" models.

From an economic perspective, Huang Zehua told 36Kr that its intelligent heavy trucks save 0.2 - 0.3 kWh per kilometer on average compared to "fuel - to - electric" models, with a 20% reduction in energy consumption. If a truck driver travels more than 150,000 kilometers a year, they can save 45,000 yuan or more.

According to official data, as of mid - year this year, Lingyi Auto has delivered more than 700 intelligent heavy trucks, ranking among the top new heavy - truck players. Bulk logistics customers account for nearly 80% (such as those transporting sand, gravel, cement, coal, steel, non - ferrous metals, etc.). Lingyi Auto's goal this year is to deliver 1,500 heavy trucks.

From a market - structure perspective, although traditional fuel - truck manufacturers still have strong brand influence, sales channels, and production capacity due to the inertia of the times, Huang Zehua believes that the current new - energy transformation of trucks is similar to the situation of new passenger - car players like "NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto" in 2018, when their first - generation models were entering the mass - production stage.

Image source: Lingyi Auto

However, manufacturing trucks is just the first step. In Huang Zehua's view, the ultimate goal is driverless trucks. He believes that the industry has the opportunity to achieve full - scale driverless operation in the next 10 years. This idea is the driving force for him and his team every day.

Therefore, in addition to developing vehicle hardware, Lingyi is also developing autonomous driving algorithms suitable for heavy - truck scenarios, taking into account factors such as load and braking distance. Huang Zehua's goal is to achieve L4 - level autonomous driving for trucks using an "end - to - end" vision solution. "With the capabilities of an end - to - end model, the generalization ability of scenarios can be greatly enhanced."

Huang Zehua told 36Kr that Lingyi is promoting truck autonomous driving technology based on a one - stage end - to - end and multi - modal large model. Lingyi believes that a one - stage model can simplify the system, fully leverage the advantages of end - to - end technology, and bring a higher upper limit of capabilities; a multi - modal large model can make full use of the knowledge reserve and generalization ability of large language models to efficiently solve the long - tail problems of autonomous driving.

In late July this year, vehicles equipped with Lingyi's ZSD system will be delivered to a stainless - steel factory in Yangjiang, Guangdong, to start operations. Lingyi plans to implement L4 autonomous driving in semi - enclosed scenarios (such as ports, mines, and bulk logistics lines) and deploy more than 10,000 driverless trucks in 500 cities in the next three years.

Meanwhile, Lingyi Auto will also explore and promote intelligent driving in the truck field together with its shareholder Momenta.

It is worth noting that this is Momenta's first layout in the truck field. In the passenger - car field, Momenta has won orders from many domestic and foreign automakers and has become a leading supplier of assisted - driving systems. From the passenger - car to the truck field, Momenta's intelligent layout has become broader.

However, compared with passenger cars, trucks have a stronger production - tool attribute, and consumers are more price - sensitive. Currently, the intelligent functions promoted in the truck industry include lane - centering driving and lever - operated lane changes. By teaming up with Momenta, which has rich mass - production experience, Lingyi Auto may not face too many challenges in realizing more intelligent functions for trucks.

Lingyi Auto hopes to gradually promote the commercial implementation of high - level autonomous driving, starting from closed scenarios, moving to semi - enclosed scenarios, and then to open scenarios.

"When the technology is truly applied to the whole vehicle, you'll find that hardware design, production and manufacturing, the supply chain, sales channels, charging and energy replenishment, and after - sales service are all new topics." From computer vision to full - chain R & D of vehicle hardware, Huang Zehua is now more deeply rooted in the complex system of the manufacturing industry. He admits that the challenges are huge, but he also feels more grounded.