36Kr Exclusive | Former product heads of DJI and Insta360 launch smart two-wheeler venture, raising over 100 million yuan in financing from investors including Honghui and Brizan

Author | ZHANG Ziyi

Editor | YUAN Silai

36Kr learned recently that smart mobility enterprise "Xunlu Innovation" has completed a new round of financing exceeding 100 million yuan at the beginning of this year. This round of financing is led by existing shareholder Brizan Ventures and new shareholder Honghui Fund, with continued follow-on investment from HSG, Shunwei Capital, Original Capital, Professor GAO Bingqiang personally, and Qingshuiwan Fund under Professor LI Zexiang.

The raised funds will be mainly used for mass production of products, R&D of new products and talent team building.

Founded in 2023, Xunlu Innovation is positioned as an intelligent system for low-speed short-distance mobility scenarios. Its brand TARRAN mainly provides new smart mobility solutions for global family users. In the past three years, the company has built a technical base covering power drive, perception fusion, control algorithm and human-computer interaction, and completed mass production and delivery of multiple smart mobility products based on this platform. The speed from product concept to mass production is significantly ahead of the industry, which verifies the capability of the technology platform to achieve rapid implementation in different product forms, and supports the company to continuously expand the category boundary.

"Different products can reuse platform capabilities such as underlying electronic control, sensors and closed-loop algorithms. And the self-developed central control 2.0 will precipitate all technical accumulation into an efficient general-purpose platform," GUO Zhuo, founder and CEO of Xunlu Innovation, told 36Kr.

Cargo Bike is the first category selected by TARRAN, not only because it is a large market with definite demand (Cargo Bike is becoming the main mobility tool for many young European families to replace their second car), but more importantly, it provides the best training ground for the above-mentioned intelligent motion system. First of all, its starting under heavy load, turning stability and braking safety pose far greater challenges to the control algorithm than ordinary bicycles, and family users have stronger demand for intelligent assistant functions such as active safety and collision warning; secondly, high-frequency real road scenarios such as daily pick-up, shopping and commuting can also continuously provide high-quality data; and the relatively high customer unit price is enough to cover relevant costs, making intelligence realizable on BOM.

Kickstand

Power on

Cargo Bike is not only a touchstone of technology, but also the best business entry to a larger platform. The company has now mass-produced two products, the T1 Pro with front box structure and a maximum load of 220kg, and the L1 in the form of a long-tail bicycle with a maximum load of 215kg. Both products are equipped with rear radar and camera, intelligent light, automatic kickstand, automatic transmission and electric lifting seatpost, which mainly solve the problems of full-load start, temporary parking and rear vehicle perception when family users carry children and goods.

36Kr learned that the electric assist trailer is a new product that Xunlu will focus on promoting in the next stage, which is planned to be released within this year. The product aims to become the world's first mass-produced intelligent trailer. Most traditional bicycle trailers are of pure mechanical structure, with no power and active braking, and rollover accidents are prone to occur when the load is too large. Xunlu transplants the electric assist and control system on Cargo Bike to the trailer. The product is equipped with a motor and multiple sensors for torque, speed, position, etc., and judges the user's traction action through multiple sets of control algorithm closed loops, and then provides corresponding assist or braking.

"If you pull fast, it will go fast; if you stop, it will stop too," GUO Zhuo explained. Users can easily pull the fully loaded product up and down slopes, and the trailer can actively brake after the traction is released. The product can be towed by people, or connected to ordinary bicycles or electric assist bicycles, with a rated load of 60kg and a maximum speed of 25kph. Different from traditional trailers, Xunlu's core capability is not a single hardware integration, but the long-term accumulated human-machine cooperative control, power management and safety control algorithms.

GUO Zhuo said that in the longer term, the unique value of smart mobility is that it is not only a consumer product, but also a carrier for continuously collecting high-quality real-world data — the high-frequency use by users and their travel in real and complex environments enable it to cover capillary-level mobility scenarios and become a powerful node for accumulating spatial intelligent data.

In terms of channels, TARRAN has now covered hundreds of high-end bicycle retail stores in markets such as Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Benelux, France, the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, and has started to enter core chain channels such as Cyclable in France and AureusDrive in Switzerland. The company is also expanding the North American market, negotiating cooperation with local family bicycle subscription institutions and retail service platforms. At present, the growth rate of new channel stores and product sales are both increasing rapidly.

GUO Zhuo told 36Kr that Cargo Bike is not a fast-moving consumer electronics product. Overseas channels need continuous observation to judge whether a new brand can operate for a long time. "This kind of credit is like saving money: saving for two years may not be enough, saving for the third year may just be enough, and then you have to keep saving. We are now entering a stage where the growth index curve is climbing up rapidly."

The founding team of Xunlu comes from technology enterprises such as DJI, Anker Innovations, and Insta360. Founder GUO Zhuo has 16 years of experience in product R&D and project management. As a product manager at DJI, he was responsible for multiple drones and the first-generation Osmo handheld gimbal camera. From 2019 to 2023, he was responsible for the GO series thumb action cameras and the X series panoramic action cameras at Insta360, and was the main person in charge of product line R&D. The team has deep accumulation in robot sensing, motor control and intelligent system development.

CEO Dialogue

36Kr: What are the most important goals and challenges after the company enters the next stage?

GUO Zhuo: First of all, we still need to make the already delivered products well, including quality, after-sales and user experience. The European market attaches great importance to long-term credit, which cannot be established by a single release or a single sales volume, and requires continuous investment.

The second is to maintain innovation and continue to promote system upgrades and subsequent products. Our rhythm is to develop N+1 while making N, and plan N+2, but innovation cannot be separated from delivery. The biggest challenge is to continue to ensure product quality and cash flow safety while expanding channels, shipments and teams.

36Kr: Why not define Xunlu as a traditional electric assist bicycle company?

GUO Zhuo: We prefer to become a hard technology company in the field of smart two-wheelers. Cargo Bike is the most mature product entry at present, but what we have really accumulated are batteries, electronic control, motors, sensors, and the capability of human-device interaction.

Future products may take other forms besides bicycles and trailers, but the business boundary will still focus on carrying people, carrying goods and family travel. We will not chase short-term popular categories, but gradually extend the underlying technology to more products in the same user circle.

Cover image source | Provided by the enterprise