TL;DR
ECARX, the automotive tech company backed by Geely founder Li Shufu, has signed a ~$750 million deal with May Mobility to supply thousands of purpose-built robotaxi vehicles with custom L4 computing and sensor suites. The vehicles will be manufactured outside China to comply with US connected-vehicle regulations.
ECARX, the automotive technology company backed by Geely founder Li Shufu, has signed a strategic framework agreement with May Mobility to supply thousands of autonomy-enabled vehicles for the American robotaxi operator’s commercial fleet. The deal, valued at approximately $750 million, pairs a Chinese-founded hardware supplier with one of the few US robotaxi companies that has moved beyond pilot programmes to sustained commercial operation, and it arrives at a moment when Washington is actively restricting the use of Chinese automotive technology on American roads.
What the deal involves
Under the agreement, ECARX will deliver purpose-built vehicles equipped with custom Level 4 central computing platforms and full sensor suites designed specifically for autonomous ride-hailing. The vehicles and their sensor systems will be manufactured outside China, a deliberate structural decision to comply with US regulations governing information and communications technology in connected vehicles. Deployments are expected to begin next year, with scale-up targeted for 2028, when the companies aim to achieve a 50 per cent cost reduction in per-vehicle autonomy hardware compared to current industry benchmarks.
The partnership represents a shift in how robotaxi fleets are assembled. Rather than retrofitting existing consumer vehicles with aftermarket autonomy stacks, as most operators have done to date, ECARX and May Mobility are building vehicles from the ground up with Level 4 hardware integrated at the factory level. That approach, if it works at scale, could eliminate the engineering overhead and reliability problems associated with bolt-on sensor arrays and computing modules.
Who is ECARX
ECARX was founded in 2017 and is now headquartered in London and Singapore, with more than 1,400 employees across 13 locations worldwide. The company listed on the Nasdaq in 2022 under the ticker ECX. Its largest shareholder is Li Shufu, the billionaire founder of Geely, whose automotive empire includes Volvo Cars, Polestar, Lotus, and Zeekr. Ziyu Shen serves as CEO.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
The company’s core business is building the computing and software platforms that sit inside vehicles, the digital cockpit systems, connectivity modules, and central computing architectures that increasingly define the driving experience. Geely has a long history of partnering with technology companies on autonomous driving, and ECARX represents the group’s bet that the computing hardware inside vehicles will become as strategically important as the engines and drivetrains that defined the previous era of automotive manufacturing.
May Mobility’s commercial track record
May Mobility, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has raised approximately $300 million in total funding, including a $105 million Series D led by NTT. The company has partnerships with Toyota, Uber, Lyft, Grab, and NTT, and has completed more than 500,000 commercial autonomous rides across the United States and Japan.
What distinguishes May Mobility from many of its competitors is that it has been running paid, public-facing autonomous services rather than closed pilot programmes. The company’s autonomy system uses what it calls “in-situ AI,” combining deep learning with a dynamic world model and a real-time reasoning engine that adapts to local driving conditions. The ECARX deal gives May Mobility a dedicated vehicle platform designed around its autonomy stack, rather than requiring it to adapt its software to vehicles originally designed for human drivers.
The regulatory backdrop
The deal’s most significant design choice, manufacturing vehicles and sensors outside China, reflects the tightening regulatory environment around Chinese automotive technology in the United States. The Commerce Department’s information and communications technology and services (ICTS) rules restrict the import of connected vehicle hardware and software from adversary nations, and the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026 codified additional restrictions on Chinese-origin components in vehicles operating on US roads.
ECARX’s decision to structure its supply chain to avoid Chinese manufacturing for this contract is a direct response to those restrictions. The company is, in effect, offering American customers access to Chinese-developed automotive computing expertise while routing the physical production through jurisdictions that satisfy US compliance requirements.
The approach mirrors a broader pattern across the automotive industry. Foreign automakers have increasingly turned to Chinese technology partners because they cannot develop competitive software and autonomous systems fast enough on their own, but the political environment requires creative structuring to make those partnerships viable in Western markets.
The competitive landscape
The ECARX-May Mobility deal lands in a robotaxi market that is simultaneously consolidating and expanding. Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, remains the dominant US operator, and has partnered with Zeekr, another Geely brand, for its next-generation Ojai robotaxi platform currently deploying in 2026. Wayve raised $1.5 billion to scale its autonomous driving AI globally, and has commercial robotaxi trials planned with Uber in London. Uber, Wayve, and Nissan are bringing robotaxis to Tokyo by late 2026.
In China, Baidu’s Apollo Go, Pony AI, and WeRide are scaling their robotaxi operations domestically and beginning to expand internationally, often with a significant cost advantage derived from cheaper hardware and lower operating expenses. XPeng has begun mass-producing its own robotaxi in Guangzhou, becoming the first Chinese automaker to build a robotaxi entirely with in-house technology.
The $750 million ECARX-May Mobility agreement suggests that the next phase of the robotaxi industry will be defined not just by who builds the best autonomy software, but by who can deliver the most cost-effective, purpose-built vehicle platforms at scale. For May Mobility, the deal provides a path to fleet economics that retrofitted vehicles cannot match. For ECARX, it represents an entry into the American autonomous vehicle market that navigates the regulatory restrictions its Chinese heritage would otherwise make prohibitive.
