WeRide Inc.

Tui Wright's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. We will be hosting a question and answer session after management's prepared remarks. Please note that today's event is being recorded. The company's financial and operating results were released by the Newswire earlier today and are currently available online. Joining us today are WeWrite's founder, chairman and CEO, Dr. Tony Han, and CFO, Ms. Jennifer Lee. In addition, co-founder and CTO, Dr. Yan Li, will also be available during the question and answer session. Before we continue, I'd like to refer you to the safe harbor statement in the company's earnings press release, which also applies to this call, as today's call will include four looking statements, including our strategies and future plans. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by these four looking statements as a result of various important factors and please refer to the risk factors section of our US prospectus file with the SEC for a full disclosure of these risk factors. Please note that all numbers stated in management's prepared remarks are in RMB terms and we will discuss non-IFRS measures today. which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported in the company's earnings release and filings with the SEC. With that, I'll now turn the call over to the company founder, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Tony Han. Please go ahead, sir.

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our first earnings call as a NASDAQ-listed public company. 2024 was an important year for WeRide. marked by significant advance of our call over tax business, international expansion, and product development. As we continue to build on our positions as an industry leader, we remain committed to our mission of transforming urban living through safe, reliable, and accessible autonomous driving solutions. The progress we have made during the fourth quarter has been particularly encouraging. It positions us well for 2025 and beyond. It also reflects our strategic focus on establishing foundations for long-term sustainable growth. We believe this will allow us to best deliver on our mission and create lasting value for our stakeholders. Let's begin with our core business, Lomo Taxi. We have made exciting achievements together with our partners. In October, we launched our new purpose-built robotaxi, the GSR, which represents a significant leap forward in AV technology. Just four months after the launch, GSR has begun her full driverless commercial operation in Beijing, becoming our second AV authorized to provide unmanned and paid robotaxi in the capital of China. This rapid development demonstrates both our technology superiority and the increasing regulatory acceptance of AVs. The debut of GSR also coincided with the third anniversary of our robot taxi operation in UAE. In the fourth quarter, we started a new chapter in this region by collaborating with Uber to launch a ride-hailing partnership in Abu Dhabi. This represents the first time that AVs are available on Uber outside the US. We are excited to announce that by mid-2025, the number of robo-taxis on the Uber platform will reach 50. With the support of the Abu Dhabi Integrated Transport Center, our service is available in major areas, including Sebyat Island, Yas Island, and the road to the Eid International Airport. This marks a key milestone of our commercialization in this region. that the Robotech industry has entered an exciting development phase powered by increasing public acceptance and a more favorable regulatory environment. As a first mover, we are well positioned to capitalize this shift and fully committed to improving the accessibility of our Robotech service globally. In January, we launched our first strategic robotaxi pilot project in Switzerland. In March, we officially obtained a permit to conduct commercial robotaxi ride-hailing service in Kuo urban area in Beijing. Our rewrite one foundation model enables us to operate successfully in diverse environments. Our robotaxi can maneuver smoothly in crowded tier one cities such as Guangzhou and Beijing. and maintain very stable performance in extreme weather conditions such as very heavy rain and extreme heat. Most importantly, we prioritize safety in our operations. Our robot taxi fleet has completed more than 1,900 days of commercial operation on public roads with zero regulatory displaying caused by autonomous driving system failure. Next, I'm going to share with you our market strategy. which focuses on internationalization. We have been spearheading commercialization in the global market since 2021. Back then, we launched our robot taxi ride hailing service in Abu Dhabi, which was the first of its kind in the region. Our outstanding performance leads to UAE's first and only national permit, which was granted to WeRide in 2023. We were greatly encouraged by this success, which validated both our technology and service. In new markets, we are committed to fostering constructive dialogue with regulators to realize our mutual vision for safe autonomous driving. We have also built a robust ecosystem by forging strategic partnership with a wide range of key stakeholders. Besides joining forces with Uber in the Mideast, We collaborate with Zurich Airport in Switzerland to provide RoboBus shuttle service, and partnered with Renault, Belty, and Massif in France to offer trial RoboBus service. We also provide driverless solutions to the largest sanitation operator in Singapore, Techia Maintenance. These initiatives are evidence of our serious commitment to the global expansion. As of today, we have deployed L4 vehicles across more than 30 cities in 10 countries. Domestically, despite current economic headwind, we have expanded our footprint to over 20 cities in China with our robo-taxi, robo-bus, robo-sweeper, robo-van and related services. We are actively building a strong business development team and implementing dynamic pricing strategies to drive growth in our whole market. we remain optimistic about her long-term potential. Our strategy of engaging in multiple markets provide us with resilience and various opportunities for growth, thereby mitigating the risks associated with dependence on any single market. Through focusing on international expansion, we are confident in our ability to expand customer base and turbocharge our long-term growth. Now let's discuss technology and products that underscore our success. Our global strategy is governed by the focus on technology innovation. It ensures that we remain competitive in every single market we enter. We began deploying end-to-end models for both ADAS and L4 driverless systems in the second half of 2024. The end-to-end model employs a large VLM, i.e. visual language model, which is pre-trained with all the data available from the internet as the backbone to encode the world's knowledge. It is then trained with nearly 1 million hours of carefully selected driving data from both human drivers and the simulated driving scenarios based on our world model. The training data continuously grow with high quality driving data, as well as more long tail cases covered by real world data and simulated data. Such an approach ensures the trained model has a general understanding of the world, as well as deep insight in driving. Eventually, our autonomous driving systems can perform like a seasoned taxi driver in various complex urban scenarios. For our L4 driverless products, such as RoboTaxi and RoboBus, the end-to-end model is accompanied with safety-critical frameworks to bring human-like driving experience while maintaining the same high level of safety required by driverless systems. They are available in our latest version of RoboTaxi, GXR, which is currently running in multiple countries. We have also achieved several key breakthroughs in product development in 2024. First and foremost, as mentioned at the beginning, we unveiled our new purpose-built Robotaxi, the GSR. It is carefully tailored for scalable and driverless operation with an improved redundant system. It features an industry-leading L4 drive-by-ware chassis architecture, spacious seating design, and we write the proprietary sensor suite 5.6. With an autogrid computing power of 1,300 TOPS, GSR is able to handle the highest level of complexity. We have also put into thorough consideration of user experience, such as designated carry-on luggage area, a gradual stop button, and an electrical power sliding door. GSR has started serving citizens in Beijing in this February and will soon be deployed in Guangzhou and Abu Dhabi. With this groundbreaking product, We are going to redefine autonomous driving experience by providing a safer and more comfortable mobility option. In other elbow segments, we extended our product family by releasing a new RoboSweeper, the S1, and a new RoboOne, the W5. Both represent our customer-centric productization philosophy. S1 RoboSweeper complements and is deployed alongside our larger S6 RoboSweeper. It can navigate smoothly in narrow space while effectively cleaning various road services. W5 features the largest cargo capacity in its class, making it fit for various point-to-point logistics scenarios. We have seen strong demand just one month after we introduced the W5 RoboVAN. These innovations expand our addressable market enhance our capabilities, and offer to create additional revenue streams beyond our callable taxi business. As we look forward to the remainder of 2025, our strategy will focus on setting the stage for future growth through multiple coordinated initiatives. We are preparing to take advantage of the recovery of the domestic market and expanding our presence internationally. In tandem, we will continue to diversify our revenue streams through product innovation and upgrades. Finally, we are committed to scaling our robo tax fleet to a meaningful size that drives operational efficiencies and strengthens our industry leadership. These efforts will lead to sustainable long-term growth. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Jennifer Li, to give us our financial report. Jennifer, please go ahead.

Thank you, Tony. Hello, everyone. Before we get into the financials, please know that all amounts are in RMB and all comparisons are on year-over-year basis unless otherwise stated. Now let's go through our fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial performance. In 2024, V-Ride reached record-breaking robo taxi revenue and achieved the highest international revenue since our founding. Total revenue for the fourth quarter decreased by 3% to $141 million, primarily due to a decline in our service revenue, which was partially offset by the growth in product revenue. For the full year of 2024, total revenue was $361 million. By revenue type, Product revenue saw substantial growth, increasing by 46% to $52 million for the fourth quarter. This growth was mainly driven by a significant rise in the sale of the robo-taxi, robo-sweeper, and robo-van during the quarter, although partially offset by a decrease in revenue from the sale of robo-buses. Service revenue, on the other hand, decreased to $89 million, mainly because customized R&D service for certain clients were completed during the previous quarter, with renewed contract expected to take effect in 2025. For the full year of 2024, product revenue increased by 62% to $88 million, while service revenue decreased by 21% to $273 million. In terms of gross margins, Product growth margin were 17% and service growth margin were 48% for Q4. For the full year, growth margin for products and services were 18 and 35%, respectively. Now turning into our operating expenses. In the fourth quarter, operating expense rose by 82% to $640 million. For the full year of 2024, The operating expense increased by 32% to $2.3 billion. The change was mainly due to a higher personnel-related expense for both Q4 and the full year, as well as an increase in share-based compensation, which we will refer to as SBC from here on. We believe that its increased operating costs were moderate relative to the market, and it well positioned V-Ride for growth at scale. enabled us to build strong distribution network and become front runner in deploying our products in more international markets with better profit margin and significant growth potential. Breaking this further down, R&D expense increased by 32% to 320 million in Q4 and increased by 3% to 1.1 billion for the full year of 2024. Excluding SBC, R&D expense increased by 57% to $284 million in Q4 and increased by 39% to $857 million for the full year of 2024. R&D expense grew as we continue to invest in attracting industry-leading talents to constantly improving our technical capabilities and products, as well as launching new innovative autonomous driving products and services. Administrative expense increased by 205% to 305 million in Q4 and increased by 82% to 1.1 billion for the full year of 2024. Excluding SBC, administrative expense increased by 63% to 66 million in Q4 and increased by 26% to 201 million for the full year of 2024. The increase was primarily due to our continuous effort to execute our growth strategy. strengthening our organizational infrastructure and recruit key employees across relevant functions. We also face higher professional services fee compared to previous quarters as we transitioned to being a public listed company. Selling expense increased by 52% to 15 million in Q4 and increased by 29% to 54 million for the full year of 2024, excluding SBC, selling expense were up 71% and 74% for the quarter and for the three years, respectively. This increase reflects our continuous expansion of the sales network initiatives to promote the advantage of our autonomous driving products and services, as well as efforts to build brand awareness. With this increased spending, we successfully launched more commercial projects, across multiple cities in China and rapidly expand our presence in key markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Our net loss increased by 66% to $592 million in Q4 and increased by 29% to $2.5 billion for the full year of 2024. On a non-IFRS basis, which excludes certain factors as outlined in our early release and corresponding US SEC filings, The net loss increased by 112% to $246 million for Q4 and increased by 60% to $802 million for the full year of 2024. As of December 31, 2024, we hold $4.9 billion in cash, cash equivalent, and time deposits, along with $14 million in restricted cash and 1.7 billion in financial assets measured at fair value through profit and loss. We expect our solid cash position will allow us to sustain ongoing R&D efforts and expense deployment of our autonomous driving vehicles across more cities. We believe this investment will yield significant commercial returns in the coming years. In closing, 2024 was a strong year for our company. V-Ride has launched autonomous driving testing and operation in 10 countries, achieved record-breaking robot taxi revenue, and the highest international revenue. Our strategic investment in research and development and other key areas have led to innovative autonomous driving products and extended global deployments. Looking ahead, we have a robust pipeline of opportunities to work on in 2025, which we believe will drive the deployment development of advanced technology, shaping not only the future of our company, but also the future of the autonomous driving industry. With that, operator, we are now ready to take on questions.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To redraw your question, please press star 11 again. Our first question comes from the line of Tim Schell of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead, Tim.

Hi, this is Tim from MSL. Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on NOTBO project breakthroughs globally. So I have two questions. So the first question is about we rise as a business model because we noticed The industry has been evolving rapidly, so we definitely want to know that. What is the revised current Robotaxi business model? And could the management team also share the latest progress? I think Tony has mentioned several exciting breakthroughs, but what could be the next? So that's my first question. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. I'll take the first question. Our Robotaxi business model is quite unique from others. For international markets outside China, we provide autonomous vehicles and services to local partners and global platforms through a combination of selling the vehicles, charging a fixed service fee, and a revenue sharing arrangement. This ensures we have a positive contribution margin from day one. Our strategy focuses on collaborating with leading platforms in each market so that we can achieve faster robo-taxi deployment, better utilization of robo-taxi fleet, and stronger pricing power. Our goal is to establish a presence in core cities moving from zero to one to capture the total draft for markets for autonomous vehicles. We're expanding globally with certain overseas markets offer very attractive unit economic and time. While China provides very rich scenarios to prove and refine our technology and products. For example, in the Middle East, We partnered with Uber to launch commercial robot taxi services starting from December 2024 in Abu Dhabi. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest commercial robot taxi service outside the U.S. and China. We will continue to increase the fleet to 50 robot taxis by mid-2025 and improve operations by increasing pickup and drop-off points and operation areas. Another example is that we began working on pilot testing of RoboTaxi in Spitterland. It's the largest local operator and we expect to start open to public trial this year. Also in China, we run our own platform, WeWriteGo, to offer RoboTaxi services to users directly. We expect unit economic for RoboTaxi in first year cities in China to turn positive in the coming years. We plan to involve third-party asset owners to purchase the fleet and operate them on our platform by then. In short, our goal is to maintain an asset-light business model and to scale the Robotaxi fleet as much as possible. Thank you.

Thanks for the detailed information and sharing. Just a quick follow-up on Robotaxi. Because we think that robot taxis, as Tony mentioned, remains the WeRise core business and is a very topical business. Could you elaborate a bit more about WeRise's current market position in the robot taxi industry, probably both domestically and globally? That's my second question. Thank you.

Okay, I will take this question. So, first of all, I think WeRise is definitely in a leading position in the robot taxi segment. I will explain more in detail. First of all, I think WeRide maintains her global leadership in both technology and commercialization. And if you really look into the numbers, so far WeRide deployed one of the largest leads globally with the best safety records. As I mentioned in the opening remarks, We are the only company, to our best knowledge, that holds a track record of zero regulatory displaying caused by AD system failure. So that is an amazing number. And also, we are the only company that holds autonomous driving permits from four countries. We test and operate in various complex environments with dense population. And that one is actually a best testament of our technological leadership. And with our various products, including RoboTaxi and RoboVAN, you can find our RoboTaxi operation is highly scalable because we really build a very rigorous operating setup, including remote assistance center, fleet management system, and the sale operation design. We also, over the years, we have established streamlined SOP that enables successful developments in any new city within one month. We have launched a purposely built and cost-effective car model GXR that ensures safe and reliable driving performance at a large scale. And last and also most important, Since the foundation of WeWrite eight years ago, we always treat technology as the base of the whole company. We devote tremendous of efforts, lots of research efforts, lots of fundings for R&D, and we really put huge efforts to recruit talents. All of this finally resulting very, very advanced RoboTaxi technology, which reflects our performance. And if you look at our current safety standards, that reflects our technology advance. So with all of these results, I do believe BeWire is definitely in a leading position.

Thank you, Tony, for the great callers and congratulations again for the remarkable breakthrough in the global market. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jiajie Shen of JP Morgan. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Jiajie.

Yes, thank you for taking my questions. This is Sadia from JP Morgan. First of all, congrats on your recent encouraging business development and expansion in global markets. I have two questions. The first one is, while scaling robo-taxi operation in both domestic and overseas markets, what major challenges do you foresee? And the second question is, how do you view the future competitive landscape from here? Thank you.

Let me answer these two questions. I think the first question is really about challenges in scaling robo-taxi operations. That is a great question, and I think that is the challenges facing all the autonomous driving companies who have a business in robo-taxi. And to rewrite that, we believe these challenges also introduce lots of opportunities. Why? Because if you can conquer these challenges and handle these challenges very well, and the way you handle it becomes the mode of your business. More specifically, city-level opening up is necessary for commercial operations at scale. And the V-Ride has been known to be very good at taking this step-by-step. Most authorities like municipal governments or state governments will prefer responsible approach when they adopt AV. And WeRide has a way to gradually introduce autonomous driving products, like we can always introduce RoboSweeper at first, and also fixed route minibus, which, you know, the challenges for safety for this product are relatively low compared to the requirements for RoboTaxi. But with this progressive approach, we can gradually build up the mutual trust and actually show the local government like our technology is safe, and then we can gradually introduce RoboTaxi at a scale. And new operational challenges will emerge at each of the scale, like when you deploy 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000 levels of fleet size. And so the backbone is really about the robustness of your technology and how safe can you maintain your RoboTaxi fleet during the operation. With our tractor record, I think we have already shown we can handle this challenge pretty well. Okay, that is my answer to your first question about challenging for scaling mobile taxi operation. The second question is really about future competitive landscape. As I mentioned during my answer of the first question, you know, like RoboTaxi has a very high entry barrier. So for a huge market, but there's for such a huge market, and there's to our best knowledge, there's only a handful of top players, maybe four or five. We ride is one of the pioneers. it's very, very unlikely to foresee any newcomers with a significant impact. Some peers actually are doing remarkable jobs, which propel the health development of the whole industry. For example, Waymo in San Francisco is very exciting. And we also committed to make our own contribution. We believe that Global Taxi represents a fundamental shift of core capability compares to traditional ride hailing, which heavily relies on human element. So I believe for the winning robot taxi company, they have to adopt lots of cutting-edge AI technology. And luckily, V-Ride has adopted VLA model, end-to-end model, and also word model. all of these large language model based techniques facilitate our robo taxi operation and guarantee our safety. We are well positioned to expand our leadership. What differentiates us is our technology and the business flywheel enabled by our comprehensive skill set. And I think we will continue to improve our technology and with our very fast-paced technology advancement, I think we will maintain our leading position. So in future, I do believe WeWrite will keep her leading position in robot tech business.

All right. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Li Ping Zhao of CICC. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Li Ping. Okay, good evening, Tony and Jennifer, I also got two questions here. And thanks for taking my questions. The first question is for the robot taxi business. What's your current course and path to profitability? And how big a fleet can achieve the break even? And second question is about the overseas expansion. So in general, why do you expand your business in so many countries instead of focusing on the domestic market? Thank you.

Thank you, Leiping. I'll take the first question. We believe in operating as part of a hybrid fleet as that will afford us to better ramp up the schedule and utilization of the robot taxi fleet. That said, our business model is not to be an operator outside China, so our margin is positive on day one. As of the BOM cost, our current BOM is highly competitive. We understand certain peers' unit cost goes over like $150,000 US dollars, while ours is substantially much, much lower and is still reducing. This is mainly benefiting from the mature and advanced EVA supply chain in China. As for break-even, it varies by market and by the business model. But in our target market, autonomous vehicle operating alongside human drivers in a hybrid mode, it can achieve quick profitability due to guaranteed utilization. For instance, in high-cost markets, like, say, some of the European countries and some Middle East countries, we expect operating profit margin of approximately 60% by 2030. So in terms of breakeven, as long as the utilization of Robotext is high, breakeven is achievable, even with a small Robotext fleet in a new city. However, if like say a Robotext player operates on its own platform in a small zone, for example, in one fourth or one sixth of a city area, It's relatively difficult to have a high utilization rate unless they have a huge discount and the retailing price is very low. Either way, it's pretty hard to operate in a smaller zone on its own platform and achieve quick even. This is why we'll prefer the hybrid mode for outside China. Yeah, thank you. Tony, you want to take the second question?

Okay, I'll take the second question. So if I remember correctly, the second question is really about why not just focusing on the domestic market? Well, first of all, I think it's very natural if you can do well in both global market and domestic market, why not do well in both? Actually, look at our track record and our numbers. I think we can say we do well in both markets. There are several reasons why we can do well in both markets with a relatively lean team, but the fact is we do believe we can do well in both markets. One reason is we have a very general, very universal foundation model, and we build up our autonomous driving technology from just the same set of code library and then branch out for different products. that's one unique advantage of rewired and besides you know we observe a strong demand from countries that are facing challenges of aging population and rising labor costs such as singapore japan european countries so they usually should you know they are very good market uh we can definitely generate enough profit margin and so with this kind of good market and there are not very strong autonomous driving vehicle company can deploy there. So that is definitely a natural market for WeRide. And we also believe this is definitely a favorable window to engage local stakeholders, such as FirstMover, and shape local regulatory framework of autonomous driving vehicles. And besides, a multi-market approach helps us diversify our revenue streams, as I mentioned in opening remarks, and can improve our resilience against single market fluctuation. If you look at numbers, international markets represent 10% to 30% higher gross margin than the domestic market, leveraging the robustness of our products. So with all of these reasons, I think we can definitely do well both in domestic market and in global market. And rewrite has on parallel unique advantages to do both markets very well.

Got it. Thanks, Tanya and Jennifer. That's very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ting Song of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Ting.

for taking my question. Congratulations on all the progress. So I have two questions. The first one is you have launched Robotech CGXR and RoboVAN W5. So what will be your next milestone regarding technology and product development? And the second question is you just mentioned that you have started to deploy end-to-end models and VOM in your L4 system. Could you elaborate more on this, on how you could further develop your technology? Thank you.

So since these two questions are technology related, so I will cover this question. Thank you for the question, Tim. So I think that there are many exciting developments over last year. So I just want to highlight a couple of them. So in 2025, we plan to deploy hundreds of vehicles across multiple cities worldwide. So our next generation AV system will incorporate advanced high dynamic range cameras, solid state lighters, as well as auto-grid computer units. So I think these upgrades will significantly reduce the total bomb cost while enhancing our overall system reliability and ensuring a robust and cost-effective solution for autonomous mobility. So next, regarding the computer unit, we have established a strategic partnership with Lenovo to implement an NVIDIA DriveSource platform and co-develop a next-generation domain controller. This auto-grid domain controller will feature NVIDIA's latest Blackwell architecture system on chip. It was engineered for L4 autonomous driving, and we anticipate deploying this cutting-edge technology in our commercial robot taxi fleet by the second half of this year. I also want to talk a little bit about our data and models. By leveraging the extensive data collected from both ADAS and L4 vehicles, we are accumulating millions of long-tail traffic scenarios Those data sets will be integrated into our vision language models to encode a complex urban driving environment. As a result, our autonomous driving system will achieve unparalleled capability in navigating intricate urban scenarios, demonstrating the skill and the intuition of an experienced taxi driver. So we are committed to advancing autonomous driving technology, driving innovation, and delivering scalable, reliable solutions for the future of mobility. I think the second question is about how do we deploy the end-to-end models, and how do we train and deploy the VLMs to our L4 system? So actually, we deploy. began developing end-to-end models approximately a year and a half ago, initially targeting our ADAS system. So the result was remarkable. With the end-to-end system demonstrating exceptional maneuverability and a level of naturalism that exceeded our expectations, we were truly encouraged by those outcomes. So we started integrating the end-to-end model into our L4 framework as an additional path planning method. So by combining those approach with the conventional modular design of the L4 stack, we achieved an optimal balance between safety and comfort in our hybrid system. Over time, we have observed a growing trend where the AI-generated path were increasingly selected as a final decision by the AV system. That actually validates the effectiveness of this approach. So more recently, we were inspired by the recent development of large language models. We have incorporated vision language models, also known as VLMs. As a foundational framework for our end-to-end system, the VRM is pre-trained on a vast array of internet data, enabling to encode a broad understanding of world knowledge. So this foundation is then fine-tuned using nearly a million hours of meticulously curated autonomous driving data. This dual-phase training ensures that the method not only possesses a general comprehension of the world, but also deep, specialized insights into driving dynamics. So as a result, our autonomous driving systems are capable of navigating complex urban environments with the skill and the intuition of an experienced taxi driver. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. That's really helpful.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Xin Yu Fang of UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Xin Yu.

Hi. Thank you for taking my question. This is Xin Yu from UBS. I have two questions here. The first one is that we know that ADAS is a very important component of our service income. Can you elaborate a little bit more about this ADAS service? How do we partner with both our partners? And technology-wise, how do our ADAS initiative you know, interact or transfer for our L4 technology? This is my second question.

Thank you. Thank you for the question, Jingyu. So we started to co-develop L2 plus ADAS solutions with the world's largest tier one supplier, Bosch, since 2022. We delivered our first solution for mass production cars within a record-breaking 18 months. Our solutions have been deployed on the Cherry Exceed platform. So our EDA system is actually designed to seamlessly integrate with our L4 system through a unified architecture. It leverages the same data pipeline, tool chains, simulation platforms, and off-board infrastructure. So this one-size-fits-all approach allows engineers to efficiently transition between L2, L3, and L4 development. So it enables rapid iteration and deployment across different target platforms. I also want to mention that these insights and expertise gained from our ADAS development have significantly influenced our Air Force deck. For instance, the end-to-end model development for ADAS serves as an alternative for path planning in our Air Force system. Additionally, our HDMAP3 solution provides a robust mechanism to verify map accuracy and determine real-time updates during operation. So the rigorous autogrid standard applied in ADAS have also been instrumental in shaping system requirements, defining performance metrics, advancing cutting edge simulation tools, refining our validation framework, and mitigating risk associated with commercial deployment. So I think this symbiotic relationship between our ADAS And L4 systems not only accelerates the development, but also ensures a consistent level of reliability and safety across all levels of autonomy. I hope that answers your question. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the color. My second question is about our R&D expense. Can we have any color on the R&D expense? going forward in 2025 or in more near term over the next few quarters? Thank you.

I'll take the question. So our earned expense increased 3.1% in 2024. It's mainly due to increase in personnel-related expense resulting from our expansion of the R&D team, as well as the cost of upgrading our sensor suite and hardware design. So we expect our R&D expense to continue to grow at a moderate rate, along with our progress in recruiting top talents to expand our R&D force and also beefing up our compute resources. Throughout the years, we have been very cost cautious and maintain a much lower cash burn rate compared to our global and China peers. So our total liquidity position is around 910 million US dollars, which is like 6.6 billion as of like end of last year. So we believe that our current capital resource will be sufficient to meet our current and anticipated working capital requirements for the next couple of years, as well as for all the capital expenditure for R&D and business expansion. And in the next few years, we expect to see our, actually to see our business to take off. So as we make more commercial results, the liquidity position will be even stronger. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you very much for the additional callers. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Jiaqi Huang of SPDBI. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Jiaqi.

Hi, management. This is Xia from SBDBi, and I've got two questions. My first question is about our business partnership. Could you please share more about our collaboration with like NVIDIA, Uber, and other key business partners?

Okay, so I will take this question. So first of all, I think if you look at major business partners of WeWrite, They are Uber, Nvidia, Bosch, and GE for a reason. Many of them are just like top-notch company and a very, very impactful company. So I think it's all because of WeWrite's unique technology advance and our great business operation and our advantages in the market that all of these tech giants want to work with us. So for NVIDIA, you know, we have a very good relationship since the early years, like when we just found this company in Silicon Valley and we have been in touch with Jensen. And Jensen Huang, as an entrepreneur, always proved for the best technology. At that time, V-Ride was a startup and those Jensen, the best technology. Today, we still show the best autonomous driving technology. So NVIDIA become our very early investor. and also um we adopt nvidia's soc since uh um vivian error and then we gradually adopt or in x or in y and now together with lenovo we are developing uh the newest soc for both alpha and l3 systems based on their uh newest software platform So I think our relationship with NVIDIA is very strong, and we will continue to use their best SOCs available to facilitate the development of our L4 system. With Uber, this is definitely a win-win partnership. As I mentioned in opening remarks, we are going to have at least 50 robotaxis in Abu Dhabi by mid of 2025 and the numbers will only be growing bigger and bigger and you will expect more collaborations. And this is definitely a win-win partnership in the Middle East and to our bad knowledge, this is the first time Uber has an autonomous driving company have their robotaxis hooked up in their platform out of the US. And we are really excited about providing robo-tech service at a larger scale in other regions together with Uber. And with the hybrid mode, we can conquer lots of potential challenges if you just homegrown your own robo-tech service. So Uber is definitely a strong partner. And luckily, Uber also will only pick the top players. And Uber picked WayWide as a close partner. We also have very... a close partnership with Bosch. Bosch as the number one tier one supplier in the auto industry actually set up a lot of standards in ADA system. And we are the largest partner of Bosch in L2 plus ADA software stack. And the ADA system co-developed by WeRide and Bosch demonstrates top performance in the market in China and you can see There are some lots of real-time broadcasts. There are head-to-head comparisons to Tesla FSD and another system developed by Wiesel and Bosch just to show the absolute technology superiority. And also, in future, we will work for the international market. Together, we are committed to serve a wider base of OEM customers, both domestically and internationally. With the GD5 reason, the GXR we co-developed with them. It's really a groundbreaking product. And it's a purpose-built autonomous driving vehicle, four-wheel taxi, with lots of features I just mentioned in the beginning. And it's also so suitable for scalability because great cost of advantage. And we will work closely to continue to upgrade the GXL and possibly for the future models. Okay. That's the question about our collaboration. That's not my answer. Yeah, please go ahead. You have the second question?

Yes, yes. My second question is about our insights on autonomous driving. How do you think about the claim that autonomous driving will take away jobs?

OK, another very good question. I think probably last week I was interviewed by CNBC, and I was asked the same question. I think if you look back to the human history, there are many jobs disappeared, like the invention programmable switch machines replace human operators. The invention of washing machines replaced laundry workers. There are lots of jobs that are tedious and they are not so friendly to human beings. And also because in many developed societies, aging problem is a big society issue. And for aging societies like in Japan and Europe, we are short of human taxi drivers. So if we can replace this kind of jobs with machines, that's really good. And that doesn't mean we are killing jobs. We are actually getting rid of jobs that are good for the working class. We are basically facilitating the shifting of the jobs and there will be more other jobs created like in a related area like data labeling and fleet management and fleet maintenance. I think all of these jobs are very amicable to human being and nobody would really want to be a taxi driver, drive a car for eight hours, sit there. So we do believe our vision is like we work hard to make all human beings live better. And this is our mission and vision. And so with this technology development, I think we can definitely just replace some tedious, not so well-paid jobs with better jobs. That's the of all human society, and we are so lucky. We are proud to take part in this progress.

Understood. That's all for my questions. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Leo Yeo of CLFA. Your line is now open. Please go ahead, Leo.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. It's Leo from CLSA. So quick question first. What is your current RoboTaxi fleet size? And with this fleet, how many orders can you generate per day on average?

I'll take that question. Hi, Leo. So for now, we have over 1,000 autonomous vehicles. That includes RoboTaxi, RoboBus, RoboVan, and RoboSlippers, all of our products. And as for robo taxi, the total robo taxi fleet size is around 400 for now and 300 plus are in China and less than 100 are in the overseas market, but expanding quickly. So the daily orders are not very meaningful as we're still scaling given our operation area is suspending in different cities. But we are optimistic about the mid-term deployment, and we are really committed to expand. As I mentioned about in this call, so we believe as long as the utilization rate for the Robotaxi can be higher, and we think the hybrid mode will be very promising about the pickup, like getting the daily order to a similar rate of human drivers and maybe higher, giving you a robo taxi can drive up to 20 hours a day in the near future. Thank you.

Hi, thank you. I'm glad that you mentioned the other level four use cases and could you elaborate more on their business models and how do you think of these business lines when you propel the robo taxi at the same time? Thank you.

Okay, I'll take this. So for other L4 use cases, we generate revenue from the vehicle sales of RoboBus, RoboVan, RoboSweepers, as well as the recurring fee for the ongoing operational and technical support services. So all the RoboBuses, RoboVan, RoboSweepers, they are all purpose-built products with high level of market readiness. This is unlike a few years ago. We have retrofit vehicles. All of those vehicles, they are already purpose-built vehicles and designed from ground up to be autonomous vehicles. So it has very good performance and robustness. In the meantime, we expect lower unit costs for those L4 use cases as they continue to scale. In terms of the synergies, all of the different use cases, they do have great synergies with double taxes. So, these are the extensions and complements of the Robotech business. They provide rich data from a variety of operating scenarios, and for some of the markets, like our RoboBot, RoboSweeper, and RoboVan business line tend to serve as a spearhead when we enter into some of the new markets, and in some markets, the stakeholders, they may prefer products with lower speed and in geofencing deployment at the initial stage for them to understand autonomous driving. So this is all the synergies we can see. We're expanding our sales force to promote those products as well as building a broader distribution network. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. As there are no further questions, I'd like to hand the conference back to our management for closing remarks.

Okay, thank you all. We are proud of the incredible progress we have made in 2024, and we are keen to drive further innovation as a key to our long-term success. Thank you all again for joining our call today. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us or request us through our IR website. We look forward to speaking with you in our next call. Have a good day. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.