LAS VEGAS, Jan. 8, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Meituan Dianping (HKG: 3690) (the "Company"), China's leading e-commerce platform for services, today announced the first strategic partnerships with international companies for its autonomous delivery open platform, aiming to develop a complete industry value chain for autonomous delivery.
At CES 2019, Meituan signed strategic cooperation agreements with three international companies: Valeo from France, NVIDIA from US, and Icona from Italy. Valeo is an automotive supplier and partner to automakers worldwide. As the pioneer of GPU-accelerated computing, NVIDIA is a leader in AI computing. With its roots in Turin, Italy, Icona is a design company for the automotive industry.
"With the surging demand for food deliveries in China, Meituan is leveraging its platform and scale advantages to apply autonomous delivery technologies in its operations," said Wang Puzhong, Senior Vice President of Meituan. "We would like to work together with our partners to integrate resources from all parties to drive the large-scale and commercial application of autonomous delivery in China and around the world."
According to the agreements, Valeo will supply key components, including engines and sensors, for Meituan's autonomous delivery vehicles. NVIDIA will provide closed-loop technical support for autonomous delivery R&D and trial operations. Icona will be the design partner for autonomous delivery robots and vehicles.
"Autonomous delivery is not a pure technical issue, but a challenge that needs to be solved with collaboration of upstream and downstream companies in the value chain," said Xia Huaxia, Meituan's chief scientist and GM of its Autonomous Delivery Department. "The purpose of these international partnerships is to accelerate the development of autonomous delivery through building our autonomous delivery open platform with resources of the whole industry."
As the world's largest on-demand food delivery service provider, Meituan is transforming how Chinese people eat and how local merchants operate their daily business. A pioneer in interactive intelligent delivery in China, Meituan has been investing in big data, AI, and other technologies to explore the use of autonomous driving solutions for driverless delivery. With the cooperation of its partners, Meituan is conducting trial operations of autonomous delivery in a dozen of locations in China, including the Beijing Shougang Park, the Raffles City in Beijing, Xiongan New Area, and the Lenovo Building in Shenzhen.
Attending CES for the first time, the Company is showcasing the Meituan Autonomous Delivery (MAD) solution, its intelligent dispatch system, and "Meituan Brain", an on-going project with the goal to build the world's largest knowledge map for catering and entertainment. With onsite demonstrations at CES, MAD uses a variety of intelligent delivery devices, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and high/low-speed autonomous delivery vehicles and robots, to meet the needs for on-demand delivery in various scenarios such as buildings, business campuses and public roads.
About Meituan
Meituan Dianping (HKG: 3690) (the "Company") is China's leading e-commerce platform for services. With the mission of "We help people eat better, live better," the Company's platform uses technology to connect consumers and merchants. Service offerings on the platform address people's daily needs for food, and extend further to broad lifestyle and travel services. According to the iResearch Report, Meituan is the world's largest on-demand food delivery service provider and China's largest e-commerce platform for in-store dining services in 2017. It currently operates the world's largest on-demand delivery network in terms of the number of deliveries in 2017. Meituan helps consumers discover merchant information, make informed decisions, complete online and offline transactions and enjoy on-demand delivery. The Company currently owns several household brands in China, including Meituan, China' s leading online marketplace for services by GTV in 2017, Dianping , China' s leading online destination for discovering lifestyle services by MAU in 2017, Meituan Waimai for on-demand delivery services, and Mobike for bike-sharing services. Meituan had 382.3 million Annual Transacting Users and 5.5 million Annual Active Merchants by the end of third quarter 2018. The Company operates in over 2,800 cities and counties in China.
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David Liu
Meituan
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Edmond Lococo
ICR Inc.
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SOURCE Meituan Dianping
