(Yicai) Dec. 12 -- Chinese autonomous driving startup Pony.ai and carmaker GAC Group are linking arms to jointly develop and mass produce robotaxis for market launch next year.

The pair aim to deliver at least 1,000 units based on GAC Aion's electric vehicle models and equipped with Pony.ai's seventh-generation self-driving solutions, the latter announced yesterday. The first will be deployed next year in China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

The partners have already started researching and developing the model’s autonomous driving package and chassis redundancy design, Guangzhou-based Pony.ai noted.

Pony.ai and GAC have been working together since 2018. They have collaborated on several car models with Level-4 autonomous driving capabilities for road testing. GAC Capital, the private equity investment unit of GAC Group, invested USD27 million in Pony.ai in October to support the commercialization of robotaxis.

Pony.ai went public in New York on Nov. 27. The shares [NASDAQ: PONY] have gained 8.7 percent since then, closing at USD14.14 each yesterday.

The company secured USD299 million in its initial public offering. It will use 40 percent of the proceeds to promote the commercialization of robotaxis and robotrucks, 40 percent for research and development on self-driving tech, and 20 percent for general corporate purposes.

Since its establishment in 2016, Pony.ai has notched up nearly 40 million kilometers of autonomous driving road tests. It is licensed for robotaxi operations in China's four first-tier cities -- Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen -- and has cooperated with many automakers, including GAC, BAIC Motor, and Toyota Motor.

GAC Aion's sales tumbled 29 percent to 307,201 vehicles in the first 11 months of the year from a year earlier, according to the most recent update from GAC Group.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Futura Costaglione