On February 28, yingche technology, a self driving truck technology and operation company, announced that it had completed a round of B + equity financing of US $188 million. Sequoia China and Junlian capital jointly led the investment, followed by Chow Tai Fook, chenbai capital, Wuchan Zhongda Group Co.Ltd(600704) group, meituan, Weilai capital, stone capital, Bohua capital, etc. According to winning technology, through this round of financing, the company will further increase its own automated truck driving system “Xuanyuan”, the joint industry partners to launch more production models, and speed up the layout in the field of electrodynamics.
In addition, another enterprise related to automatic driving technology, Yixing intelligence, also announced that it would complete the financing today, with a financing amount of nearly 200 million yuan. The investors include GAC capital, heli capital, Linxin investment, Yipu capital, volcanic stone investment, etc. The bank announced that it would set up R & D centers in Tokyo and Guangzhou.
On February 25, Suteng juchuang, peidai automobile, Yunji Zhixing and other enterprises also announced the completion of different amounts of financing. In addition, Internet of things technology company G7 also announced on February 15 that it had obtained a financing of US $200 million.
funds piled into the self driving track
In just half a month, capital intensive has entered the field of automatic driving, and the vision of the track is obvious.
Li Zhongxin, executive director of Yunlian Research Institute, said in an interview with Securities Daily: “The acceleration of the influx of track funds is because with the development and application of automatic driving technology, the industry has gradually gained capital recognition and increased attention. The more frequent investment in the logistics field shows that the logistics hard technology is getting hotter and hotter, the industry is still in its early stage, and there are still many targets.”
For the $188 million financing obtained by yingche technology this time, Li Zhongxin believes that trunk logistics is a subdivided field with high threshold in driverless at present, and yingche technology has some landing projects in this field, so it is expected to get financing.
From the perspective of automatic driving technology for the logistics industry, at present, Zhijia technology, Tucson future and yingche technology are all in the large-scale application and commercialization of automatic driving trucks: Zhijia technology cooperates with Faw Jiefang Group Co.Ltd(000800) to launch high-level automatic driving heavy truck j7l3, and plans to mass produce L4 automatic driving trucks in 2023; Winning technology has been developing L3 class automatic driving heavy truck with Dongfeng commercial vehicle and Sinotruk Jinan Truck Co.Ltd(000951) since 2019. It integrates the Xuanyuan automatic driving system into the new generation of truck platform, and has achieved mass production. Tucson will try logistics transportation without safety officers in the future, and it is expected to achieve mass production of L4 self driving trucks in 2024
automatic driving gives birth to a trillion yuan market
In fact, the main application scenarios of self driving trucks are trunk logistics and port logistics.
According to the statistics of the heavy truck market, the statistics of China’s heavy trucks show that the number of Chinese heavy trucks exceeds 9 million vehicles, of which 3 million 500 thousand are engaged in trunk logistics. If these cars are converted into automatic driving cars, they will generate a trillion level market. “The number of intercity freight heavy trucks in China exceeds 6 million, and the market scale is about 4 trillion yuan (annual freight). The market is huge and the volume ranks first in the world.” Insiders told reporters.
In addition, the driving of large trucks is complex and requires high skills, and the long-distance driving of trucks has high labor intensity and is prone to safety accidents. It is difficult to recruit and manage drivers, and the rising cost of manpower and fuel further squeeze the profit space. Logistics enterprises have a strong demand for cost reduction and efficiency increase. At the same time, the industry is highly dispersed and lacks economies of scale. Public data show that truck drivers who drive an average of 8 to 12 hours a day account for 42.1%, and nearly 10% of drivers drive more than 12 hours a day.
At present, self driving trucks are approaching people’s lives to provide support for the fight against the epidemic. On February 26, at Shatou sub district office of Futian District, Shenzhen, the self driving light truck of Shenzhen local enterprise Yuanrong Qihang was responsible for the material distribution of Shatou sub district. According to the on-site staff, the self driving light truck began to “work” at night on the 24th. On the 25th, a single self driving light truck transported more than 500 boxes of materials, including nearly 3000 protective clothing, nearly 10000 bottles of alcohol, 10000 face screens, more than 30000 medical gloves, more than 80000 masks and more than 10000 other materials.
However, at present, L4 automatic driving truck has not really realized mass production, and the difficulties, pain points and market expectations are both.
“Due to the factors of policies and regulations, automatic driving can only be auxiliary driving at present to improve the safety of vehicle operation. However, due to the high cost, there are difficulties in large-scale application.” Li Zhongxin told the reporter of Securities Daily.
In the long slope and thick snow track of automatic driving, it is still the key stage of climbing over the ridge. The continuous improvement of policies, the replacement of technology and the transformation and breakthrough of business model are the topics that the players on the field pay close attention to.
“From the perspective of short-term and medium-term safety, yingche is committed to making trunk logistics transportation safer and reducing costs,” the relevant person in charge of yingche technology said in an interview with the reporter of Securities Daily The above person in charge added: “with the mass production of L3 truck, it will be put into operation in China’s major transportation arteries, covering major economic circles and serving many trunk logistics customers; at the same time, the Xuanyuan system developed by the company will quickly obtain 10 billion km automatic driving data from the real freight scene and accelerate the iteration to fully unmanned L4.”
Referring to the long-term goal, the other party said: “yingche’s long-term goal is to establish a freight Siasun Robot&Automation Co.Ltd(300024) network covering the whole country: with the standardization of trunk transportation, it breeds a national transportation capacity platform and improves the efficiency of the whole logistics industry.”
