From Autonomous Transfer Vehicles to Industrial Unmanned Operations: Yicheng Innovation Secures 200 Million Yuan in Series C Funding | 36Kr Exclusive

36Kr has learned exclusively that Shenzhen Yicheng Autonomous Driving Technology Co., Ltd. ("Yicheng Innovation") recently completed a Series C funding round totaling 200 million yuan. Investors in this round include Guangdong Science and Technology Investment Group, Shanda Investment, Anhui State-owned Investment, and Foshan Venture Capital, among others. The funds will reportedly be used for factory capacity upgrades, core technology iteration, and commercial deployment. Founded in 2017, Yicheng Innovation positions itself as a provider of L4-level autonomous driving last-mile commercial vehicles and intelligent driving solutions, focusing on delivering standardized products and implementation solutions for industrial and commercial scenarios. CEO Song Chaozhong told 36Kr that the company's partners span industrial manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, ports, and mining. "We already have hundreds of customers, and their common characteristic is that their campuses cover very large areas." In such scenarios, Yicheng Innovation's intelligent unmanned transfer vehicles have become its main deployed product. Song Chaozhong said Yicheng Innovation's intelligent transfer vehicles come in multiple capacities, with an average unit price of about 400,000 yuan and higher per-unit gross margins than traditional transfer vehicles. The company's current annual production capacity reaches 3,000 units. "After this funding round, our goal is to raise production capacity to 10,000 units." He told 36Kr that closed-campus horizontal transfer has typically relied on AGV products. Because of their slow speed, AGVs struggle to meet customers' demand for transfer efficiency. "Our products rank among the leaders in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's evaluations. I believe the reason lies in the technical architecture. Some similar products in the industry still use AGV product logic to control unmanned vehicle chassis, which brings many limitations." Yicheng Innovation's best-selling product is currently its 5 to 10-ton unmanned transfer vehicle. Song Chaozhong said the company's technical core is autonomous driving algorithms and software, covering the complete technology chain from perception and decision-making to execution. At the product level, its unmanned transfer vehicles do not require technical re-adaptation for different campuses, and its autonomous driving algorithms enable vehicles to independently plan and select routes. In addition, Song Chaozhong told 36Kr that control algorithms for unmanned transfer vehicles are extremely demanding. "Among the products we are developing, we have a vehicle with a maximum load of 100 tons. The whole vehicle is large and heavy, so sensor deployment and perception algorithms differ from those for small vehicles. Also, physical inertia is large, so braking delays and difficulty are greater for large vehicles. However, we have already achieved a speed of 25 km/h, while other players in the industry are generally still at 3 km/h." He told 36Kr that intelligent unmanned transfer vehicles remain an innovative product in the industry, and many companies...