Technology Companies To Increase The Number Of Trunk Logistics: Self Driving Trucks Are Coming?

High level automatic driving technology is expected to be implemented in the field of logistics soon.

Tucson, known as the world's first auto driver, is speeding up its layout in this field in the future. It is understood that Beijing Turing smart card technology Co., Ltd. was established on July 7 with a registered capital of 10 million yuan. Before that, Tuling zhika Technology Co., Ltd. had been registered in Shanghai with a registered capital of 100 million yuan. It is reported that the two companies are related to the "Turing smart card" which Tucson will launch in China in the future. Turing smart card will start from the freight van, and gradually enter the field of heavy truck. Its goal is to create a model that is more in line with the operation requirements of automatic driving fleet, lower cost and better experience.

Yang Wu, vice president of strategy and business development of Hongjing Zhijia, another technology company with the layout of trunk logistics automatic driving, recently told reporters of the 21st century economic report that they expected that next year they might usher in a turning point in the application of L3 automatic driving in trunk heavy trucks.

"The maturity of the technology and the industry's own demand for this technology will begin to combine next year." Yang Wu told reporters that recently, they attended a Yunlian summit in the field of logistics, and were particularly encouraged because they found that many leaders of logistics companies now said that they saw very clearly the impact of automatic driving technology on the logistics industry.

"In the past, we had to talk to them, and they still thought that this (high-level automatic driving) was still far away and unreliable. But in the past year, they all took the initiative to ask, when will your product be launched and when will it be available to us? How much will it cost then? It's really very proactive to embrace this emerging technology solution. " Yang Wu said.

Founded in 2018, Hongjing Zhijia is a service provider of full stack automatic driving solutions. Among the L3 and above automatic driving solutions, the landing scene of Hongjing Zhijia is robotruck (automatic driving truck), which mainly focuses on trunk logistics.

Trunk logistics is a subdivision scene that autopilot technology companies are competing for. On the one hand, its route is relatively fixed, and its demand is rigid, so it is relatively easy to land. On the other hand, trunk logistics itself is a trillion level market with huge scale and numerous opportunities for players. Now, while robotaxi (self driving taxi) is still working hard to demonstrate the operation of "running data", robotruck is preparing for mass production.

At the 2021 world artificial intelligence conference held not long ago, yingche technology, a technology company focusing on truck automatic driving technology and operation, announced that two types of front loading and mass-produced automatic driving trucks would be delivered by the end of the year, becoming "the world's first mass-produced automatic driving heavy truck".

Is self driving truck really coming?

Line dispute between L3 and L4

At present, in addition to Hongjing Zhijia and yingche technology, it also includes Tucson future, Zhijia technology, mainline technology, Xiaoma Zhixing, etc.

The 21st century economic reporter has sorted out the mass production landing plans of these companies: yingche technology, Zhijia technology and Hongjing Zhijia are relatively fast. Yingche technology plans to complete the pre loading mass production in 2021. The self driving truck built by Zhijia technology is also expected to be put into mass production and listed this year, while Hongjing Zhijia is expected to achieve mass production and landing next year.

However, Tucson's future and Xiaoma Zhixing are relatively slow to land. Tucson is expected to achieve mass production in 2024, and its self driving truck business plan is to realize pre loading mass production SOP from 2023 to 2024, and realize large-scale application of mass production of automatic driving trucks only in 2025.

The main difference lies in the different choice of technical routes: the group represented by yingche technology and Hongjing intelligent driving focused on the application of L3 automatic driving technology, while the group represented by Tucson future and pony intelligent behavior insisted on the landing of L4 automatic driving technology.

As soon as possible, mass production and landing is also the main reason for "L3 group" to choose L3 technology route at the current stage. In Yang Wu's opinion, for trunk logistics, L3 level automatic driving has been able to solve several major pain points of the current industry, including high cost, high safety accidents, etc. According to the planning of Hongjing intelligent driving, the application of L3 level automatic driving on some suitable lines can extend the time of a single driver on the vehicle and reduce the cost of logistics companies. This scene itself has market demand.

"We found that there are many routes. In fact, one driver is not enough, and two drivers are a bit wasteful. After using the automatic driving scheme, a driver may only drive eight hours a day, but now he can drive 12 hours, which means that his working hours are virtually extended. Moreover, the overall scheme of automatic driving, combined with high-precision map and road traffic condition judgment, can better control the timeliness of transportation, which is the most important thing for the logistics industry. " Yang Wu.

Commercial landing needs revenue and cost matching. According to Hongjing Zhijia's plan, they hope that for logistics companies as customers, they can recover the cost of automatic driving within half a year to one year.

However, at the 2021 World Conference on artificial intelligence, Li Hengyu, head of the mini smart card, said that for the energy-saving and easier driving of self driving trucks, the L3 class is indeed valuable, but from the perspective of cost reduction, it will not work - the automatic driving of L3 level is not enough, because people still need to watch it all the time“ A safe and reliable "virtual driver" can drive autonomously and handle emergencies properly. Only in this way can the driver be truly liberated. "

Chen Mo, the future founder of Tucson, also said in an interview with the media that the purpose of L4 is "unmanned" to completely replace the driver, so as to reduce the labor cost. In case of accident, it is the responsibility of the technology supplier, but L3 can not completely replace the driver, and the responsibility for the accident lies in the person, which can not achieve the purpose of reducing the human cost.

It is a good thing that the market has not been monopolized

In fact, for the automatic driving truck, whether it is L3 or L4 automatic driving technology, the real landing is not easy.

The L4 class autopilot which does not need to be taken over by human is needless to say, L3 class automatic driving is also faced with the difficulties of immature technology, low cost and lack of supervision.

For the past two years, some companies claimed that they had produced L3 class automatic driving trucks in mass production, and some colleagues from automatic driving technology companies said bluntly: "we understand that in fact, they did not achieve the L3 level. There are still some subtle differences in this. At that time, he can't go on the road anyway. The so-called L3 can only be used as ADAS (advanced driving assistance system) for you now. "

L3 is a watershed of automatic driving technology. Automatic driving below L3 can only be called auxiliary driving, which can be said to achieve "semi-automatic driving" at most. Although it can realize the operation of multiple functions, the driver is still the leader; And L3 level of automatic driving, the vehicle can achieve automatic driving in a specific environment, the driver can really free his hands in a long time, only need to take over when necessary.

Although the above-mentioned technology companies that do L3 level automatic driving trucks are willing to bear the responsibility for vehicle accidents in the state of automatic driving, which solves one of the biggest disputes in the actual use of L3 automatic driving, from the perspective of landing, the vehicles with L3 automatic driving can not be on the road at present, even if they can, It can only be operated in the form of auxiliary driving - in this way, it is uncertain whether the effect of reducing the number of drivers and saving the cost advocated by the suppliers can be achieved.

"From the perspective of regulation, it is understandable to be conservative. As practitioners, we can only gradually communicate with the government from these demonstration operation teams, and then establish trust and form transparency. This is very important. For example, you should share data with it, and once there is an accident, you should also share some of the causes of the accident. " Yang Wu said.

At present, Hongjing Zhijia is cooperating with an'neng logistics and JAC to develop L3 class automatic driving trucks. In the second half of this year, it is expected that 10-15 vehicles with front loading scheme will be tested. In the second half of this year, Hongjing Zhijia and Jianghuai Automobile Co., Ltd. have jointly established Yuchi technology to carry out the research and development of automatic driving domain controller.

The L4 Class Autonomous truck landed further. At present, Tucson future, pony Zhixing and other major players are scrambling for time. Previously, Wu Nan, Tucson's future partner and vice president, admitted in an interview with the 21st century economic news reporter that the mass production of self driving trucks needs to do a lot of work, not only the function development at the software level, but also the synchronization of upstream and downstream industrial chains at the hardware level.

"The whole vehicle needs the chassis controlled by wire, and also needs a mass production solution. The actuator should be oriented to automatic driving, which is the reason why Tucson and ZF cooperate." Wu Nan said, "the actuator level has not yet reached the time of mass production, and the supply is not particularly sufficient. Now the market is full of verification, so that ZF can understand our demand for actuators and carry out rapid update iteration, so as to promote the main engine plant to produce automatic driving trucks as soon as possible."

In fact, no matter whether the route chosen is L3 or L4, the real automatic driving is the most valuable for the final trunk logistics transportation scenario. However, from the point of view of the whole process, no matter who it is, they are just on the way to the beginning.

"To really realize L3 and L4, I think it's a marathon. Maybe you've run 5km now, and I've only run 3km. You said you're ahead, but in fact, there's no essential difference. We all have to run to the end, right? We all have to run 50 kilometers to get to the end Yang Wu said that the process will be very long and the competition pattern will also show dynamic changes.

However, on the other hand, Yang Wu also pointed out that the trunk line logistics transportation market is very large in scale and extremely dispersed, so it will not be monopolized by one company, so it is relatively friendly to start-up companies“ Even if you all run to the end now, as long as I can run to the end next year, I can still divide into a piece of cake and eat it myself