Xiaoma Zhixing (02026) Wang Haojun: Financial indicators do not fully reflect technological value, 2030 may be the year of commercial validation.

After the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially announced the conditional entry permit for China's first batch of L3 level autonomous driving models, the commercial path of intelligent driving has gradually become clearer. Compared to L3, the commercialization of Robotaxi (driverless rental cars) has entered a "muscle-showing" era. Recently, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and other companies have announced their progress in Robotaxi; Tesla has officially launched fully autonomous Robotaxi testing in Austin; Waymo has disclosed its operational data - since 2025, the cumulative travel volume has exceeded 14 million trips, more than three times the growth in 2024, with hopes of achieving a cumulative travel volume of over 20 million trips by the end of the year; Pony.ai (02026) announced that the seventh generation Robotaxi has achieved profitability per vehicle in Guangzhou... Faced with achieving profitability per vehicle for the first time, at a media briefing on December 16th, Pony.ai's co-founder and CFO Wang Haojun once again set a goal of "achieving breakeven for the company by 2030". In addition to setting goals, Wang Haojun further explained the financial and technological aspects that investors are concerned about, stating, "Although financial indicators cannot fully reflect technological value, 2030 will indeed be a crucial year for validating the commercial path. In addition, the ability to achieve profitability per vehicle mainly depends on balancing cost control with revenue scale. Improvements in revenue are closely related to economies of scale - only by reaching a certain scale of operation can fixed costs be effectively diluted, vehicle utilization rates be increased, and a foundation be laid for sustainable profitability." In fact, with regards to its operational scale, Pony.ai has long been one of the leading companies in the field of Robotaxi in China. According to observations by GMTEight, Pony.ai plans to launch fully driverless Robotaxi fee-based operations in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, with an expected total operating area of over 2,000 square kilometers. By then, Pony.ai will accumulate over 55 million kilometers of global autonomous driving road testing mileage, with the seventh-generation self-driving Alpha T5 developed in cooperation with Beiqi and the Robotaxi developed in cooperation with GAC officially launched in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities in November of this year. At the same time, the company's Robotaxi fleet has exceeded 680 vehicles in the first half of the year and has now reached over 961 vehicles, with plans to reach the target of a thousand vehicles by the end of 2025 and expand to over 3,000 vehicles by the end of 2026. The efficiency of single-car operations has significantly improved, with daily average revenue per Robotaxi doubling from the average level of 2024 since the beginning of 2025. By the third quarter of 2025, Pony.ai's financial profitability indicators began to climb. In the third quarter of 2025, its total revenue reached 25.4 million US dollars (approximately 181 million RMB), a 72.0% increase from the same period in 2024 of 14.8 million US dollars. This growth was mainly driven by the strong promotion of autonomous driving travel services and technology licensing and application revenue. Gross profit margin in the third quarter of 2025 climbed to 18.4%, compared to 9.2% in the same period of 2024. The improvement in gross profit margin was due to the optimization of revenue structure, particularly the increase in revenue contribution from high-margin autonomous driving travel services. At the same time, Pony.ai achieved single-vehicle profitability for its seventh-generation self-driving rental cars within the city; the commercialization of autonomous driving rental cars continued to progress steadily - the revenue from autonomous driving travel services increased by 89.5% year-on-year, with passenger fare revenue increasing by over 200%. In addition, as Pony.ai rapidly develops in the Robotaxi sector, its autonomous truck business is also accelerating. Up to now, the scale of its autonomous truck fleet has reached about 200 vehicles, with a total cargo transportation volume exceeding 1 billion ton-kilometers, and obtaining the first or batch of road testing permits and road transport operation permits for autonomous trucks in multiple locations nationwide. Recently, Pony.ai also announced partnerships with Sany Heavy Truck and Dongfeng Liuqi to jointly develop the fourth generation of autonomous truck family. According to the plan, the first two models to be introduced will be based on Sany Heavy Truck and Dongfeng Liuqi's most advanced electric platform, and will be produced on a scale of thousands of vehicles, with plans to commence operations by the end of 2026. The mass production of this series of models will drive the development and application of autonomous truck technology, achieving a leap in the industry towards "large-scale unmanned commercial operation". In response to the proportion of the autonomous truck business and its commercialization, Wang Haojun also admitted that the strategic significance of the scale of 200 vehicles at the moment is to meet the data requirements for technological iteration. "Our positioning has always been as a technology provider, rather than a traditional logistics carrier, and we expect to consider scaling commercialization only after achieving technological verification within 2-3 years."