The wave of autonomous driving companies going public on the Hong Kong stock market continues, and Tendency Vision seeks to break through with L4 technology.
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Recently, autonomous driving companies have triggered a wave of IPOs in the Hong Kong stock market.
Following the listing of autonomous driving companies Pony.ai (2026.HK) and WeRide (0800.HK) on the Hong Kong stock market, another company has embarked on its IPO journey.
Recently, Suzhou Tingtong Vision Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (“Tingtong Vision”) submitted IPO application materials to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Tingtong Vision positions itself as a technology service provider, mainly offering autonomous driving technology solutions covering automation levels L2-L2+ and L4.
However, compared to Horizon Robotics (9660.HK), another listed autonomous driving technology service provider, Tingtong Vision is relatively limited in scale.
In 2024, Tingtong Vision's revenue was 483 million yuan, with a net loss of as much as 463 million yuan for the same period.
Even more awkwardly, before its IPO sprint, since March 2025, multiple institutional shareholders including Zhuhai BAIC, ZF Holdings, and Unicom Xinwo Fund successively exited, transferring their shares to others or Tingtong Vision's affiliates, bringing more uncertainties to the prospects of Tingtong Vision’s IPO.
Tingtong Vision itself is also seeking more opportunities.
Facing intense competition in the L2 autonomous driving market, Tingtong Vision has shifted more focus to the L4 level, with revenue from this business growing more than threefold year-on-year in 2024.
Whether Tingtong Vision can gain a foothold in the L4 market is drawing attention.
Increasing Focus on L4
Tingtong Vision's autonomous driving solutions adopt a dual-track approach with L2-L2+ and L4 levels.
The L2-L2+ assisted driving solutions mainly include parking, driving, and smart cockpit functions, but the revenue proportion of this business is gradually declining.
In the first half of 2025, L2-L2+ solutions generated 58 million yuan in revenue, accounting for 36.8%, representing a year-on-year decline of over 40%.
This is the result of fierce market competition.
Currently, the autonomous driving industry consists mainly of car makers and third-party participants. The former includes automakers like BYD and Li Auto who insist on independent R&D; the latter includes Horizon Robotics (9660.HK), Tingtong Vision, Freetech, and Momenta, who need to cooperate with car makers or their suppliers to obtain orders.
With frequent price wars among car makers, suppliers' profit margins are inevitably squeezed. In 2024, the gross margin of Tingtong Vision’s L2-L2+ solution software development business was only 27.2%, down more than 10 percentage points compared to 2022.
Momenta CEO Cao Xudong stated in an interview that by 2026, only two to three companies might remain in China’s urban assisted driving sector.
Faced with a red ocean, Tingtong Vision is shifting more resources to L4 level.
“Mainly, we strategically shifted from lower technical barrier L2-L2+ retrofit solutions to OEM solutions, placing more resources in solutions requiring more advanced technology,” said Tingtong Vision.
In 2024, revenue from Tingtong Vision’s L4 fully autonomous driving business was 180 million yuan, representing more than threefold year-on-year growth.
“Due to the rapid growth of the global market, technological advancements in L4-related fields, and a favorable regulatory environment, market demand for L4 solutions has rebounded in 2024,” Tingtong Vision explained.
Tingtong Vision’s L4 autonomous driving solutions are mainly applied in driverless buses, unmanned trucks, robotaxis, and unmanned sanitation vehicles.
Currently, Tingtong Vision has secured 1 billion yuan in intent orders for L4 solutions, covering more than 2,500 Robobus, Robotaxi, and Robotruck units, expected to be delivered within the next three to five years.
However, some industry insiders believe that large-scale commercialization of L4 technology in unmanned trucks remains unachievable in the short term.
“From our observation of legislation implementation, unmanned trucks will be slower than robotaxis. Because robotaxis mainly operate within cities and don’t need interprovincial travel, while unmanned trucks are basically always interprovincial, which requires central-level legal and regulatory oversight. Given this, we estimate unmanned trucks will be at least two to three years behind robotaxis,” a senior official of an autonomous driving company in Southern China told Xin Feng.
The official also told Xin Feng that currently, in most regions, L4 unmanned trucks still need to be staffed with safety personnel, so actual operating costs cannot be reduced.
Nevertheless, Tingtong Vision still plans to use proceeds from this IPO to invest more resources in developing autonomous driving technology solutions for unmanned trucks.
Securing the Position of Technology Service Provider
Currently, Tingtong Vision mainly provides software development and license authorization services to car makers or their tier-one suppliers.
In software development, Tingtong Vision develops autonomous driving technology solutions according to car makers’ requirements and charges upfront development fees; after software development is completed, during the mass production and delivery stages, Tingtong Vision charges licensing fees per vehicle installed with the software.
Overall, Tingtong Vision is more positioned as a technology service provider, which is quite different from Pony.ai and WeRide, which were newly listed in Hong Kong this year.
Pony.ai and WeRide not only provide autonomous driving technology solutions, but also have their own robotaxi fleets, earning fees by offering ride-hailing services to passengers, covering both B-end and C-end.
In contrast, Tingtong Vision insists on a light-asset operation model.
“For L4 solutions, we mainly empower fleet operators as a third-party technology supplier. Although we also provide hardware components, our R&D and production are driven by fleet operators’ actual needs, and we avoid engaging in capital-intensive fleet construction and operation,” Tingtong Vision stated.
The benefit of this advantage is that as more car makers enter the robotaxi arena, as a third-party supplier, Tingtong Vision is expected to benefit from the booming market and gain more opportunities.
Guosheng Securities estimates that by 2030, if an individual robotaxi’s annual charged mileage is 120,000 kilometers and the average ride fee is 2 yuan/km, then the market size of robotaxi in first- and second-tier cities alone in China could reach 242.4 billion yuan.
More players are joining the field. In addition to robotaxi-focused companies like Pony.ai and WeRide, Hello and Xpeng have announced plans to launch robotaxi services.
All these provide Tingtong Vision with more room for growth in performance.
However, from the perspective of autonomous driving software service providers, Tingtong Vision's gross margin level is not outstanding.
In 2024, Tingtong Vision’s overall business gross margin was 29.96%, more than 45 percentage points lower than Horizon Robotics.
The core reason may still be Tingtong Vision’s weaker bargaining power facing downstream OEMs.
Going forward, Tingtong Vision’s key approach may still be to further expand its customer base for scalable results and break the “high cost, weak bargaining" dilemma by increasing order volume.
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