On November 10, 2021, the Ministry of Transport issued the "Notice on Organizing and Carrying Out pilot applications of autonomous driving and intelligent shipping", which shows that in order to promote the deep integration of a new generation of information technology and transportation, the pilot of autonomous driving and intelligent shipping will be launched.
In terms of automatic driving, it involves four areas: road passenger and freight transportation, urban travel and logistics, transportation in the park, and specific scene operations, of which road passenger and cargo transportation supports the pilot demonstration of truck formation operation in trunk logistics, port collection and transportation, etc., to achieve vehicle formation driving.
Autonomous driving is coming, will it replace truck drivers in the future?
Autonomous driving L0-L5
First of all, let's first understand automatic driving, automatic driving technology originated in the 1980s, according to the classification standard is divided into 6 levels, that is, L0-L5.
L0 is unauthenticated and requires full operation by human drivers;
L1 Driving Support, which provides driving support for one of the steering wheel and acceleration and deceleration operations, the others are operated by the driver;
L2 partial automation, providing driving support for multiple operations in the steering wheel and acceleration and deceleration, others operated by the driver;
L3 conditional automation, all driving operations are completed by the unmanned system, and according to the request of the system, the human driver provides appropriate operation;
L4 is highly automated, with all driving operations performed by an unmanned system on limited roads and environments;
The L5 is fully automated, requires no human driver to operate anything, is operated by an unmanned system, and can be switched to manual mode when needed.
The trend of the times The layout of car companies
Based on the special attributes of trucks and the use environment, to some extent, it will actually be easier to achieve the commercialization of autonomous driving than passenger cars, and the automation of domestic trucks has also been deployed as early as 2016.
On November 14, 2016, Foton released the first self-driving super truck in China, officially setting off a boom in autonomous driving in the field of domestic commercial vehicles.
In 2018, Shaanxi Automobile unveiled the L3 level unmanned Delong X6000; Sinotruk unveiled the Howo T5G unmanned L4 intelligent electric heavy truck; Jiefang released the J7 L4 level port intelligent car ICV, J6F L4 intelligent sanitation vehicle, artificial intelligence system UNI; Dongfeng Tianlong L4 driverless heavy truck debut; Jiangling Heavy Duty Truck Q-Truck debut; Sinotruk showed the L4 level autonomous driving mine vehicle HOWO Mine Overlord.
In 2019, Sany Special Automobile's pure electric driverless concrete mixer truck officially rolled off the production line; SAIC Hongyan 5G+L4 intelligent heavy-duty truck debut; FAW Jiefang released the world's first L2 mass-produced intelligent driving commercial vehicle; Chenglong T7 L4-level autonomous driving truck debuted; Beiben Heavy Duty Truck demonstrated L4-level autonomous driving heavy truck.
In 2020, FAW Jiefang released J7 L3 level autonomous driving heavy trucks; in 2021, Dongfeng Liuqi released two driverless commercial vehicles - tractor T7-Cross and park logistics vehicle M3Pro; and Sinotruk L4 pure electric driverless port collection card completed commercial operation...
Not only the traditional car companies we are familiar with, such as Zhijia Technology, Tucson Future, Yingche Technology, Feibu Technology, Zhitu Technology, Xidi Intelligent Driving, Baidu and other technology companies; Ali, Suning, JD.com and other e-commerce giants; Shiqiao, Juma and other logistics companies, have also entered the field of commercial vehicle automatic driving, and achieved good results.
At the same time, it has also received the support of many local governments: on March 22, 2018, Beijing issued the first domestic autonomous driving road test license; on October 16, 2018, Shanghai issued the first domestic road test license for autonomous driving heavy trucks; on September 22, 2019, Wuhan issued the world's first autonomous driving commercial license.
In addition, it is understood that there are 7 closed field test bases for automatic driving in Beijing, Xi'an, Chongqing, Shanghai, Taixing, Xiangyang and Yizhuang; 21 cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Changsha, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Guangzhou have introduced automatic driving test policies.
From the overall trend point of view, the development prospects of self-driving trucks are very impressive.
What are the benefits of self-driving trucks?
Reduces fatigue driving. Relevant data show that 37.3% of Truck Drivers in China spend more than 12 hours a day, and 82.4% of them spend more than 8 hours, causing serious fatigue driving. When the self-driving truck is driven, most of the time it is controlled by the machine, and the driver's work intensity is reduced and it is not easy to fatigue.
Reduce traffic accidents. The reason why it can be called automatic driving is because the vehicle is equipped with a number of advanced technologies, such as ADAS driver assistance system, RAB early warning braking, AEB automatic emergency braking, ACC adaptive cruise, LKA lane keeping system, etc., which can effectively increase the safety of trucks and reduce the incidence of accidents.
Reduce manpower expenditures. For the fleet and logistics enterprises, there are several cars under the name to be equipped with several drivers or even more, according to 15 cars, drivers monthly salary of 8,000 yuan to calculate, a year is not a small amount. If you switch to a self-driving truck and run long distances without a driver working shifts, this part of the expenditure can be reduced accordingly.
Boost productivity. People can't go 24 hours a day without rest, but machines can. From multiple road test results, it can be known that the speed of self-driving trucks can reach 80-90km/h, or even 100km/h. Compared with the 40km/h of manual driving, the transportation efficiency is greatly improved, and the advantages of running cold chain or green pass are more prominent.
Autonomous driving ≠ driverless
Although the development prospects of self-driving trucks are considerable, but the maturity of technology, user acceptance, policies and regulations, cost control, business models, road environment are all urgent problems to be overcome, at present, we can only see the figure of autonomous trucks in specific closed scenes such as ports, mines, and factories.
It is not difficult to find that the current technology of self-driving trucks has only reached the L4 level, and it has not yet achieved full implementation in the inspection stage, and there is still a long way to go from the real automatic driving of the L5 level.
Back to the previous question: autonomous driving is coming, will it replace truck drivers in the future? No way.
The freight industry is not only driving this link, such as the early negotiation of freight rates, the passage to the fruit and vegetable goods to pull tarpaulin breathable, in the face of bad weather to communicate with the cargo owner late, pay tolls, refueling / charging the car, settlement of freight, these are the need for human intervention.
Rather than autonomous driving, we can understand it as driving assistance, and the driver needs to be inside the cab. The system assists the driver to drive, and the driver can also take over the steering wheel at any time in case of emergency, and the self-driving truck and the human are complementary to each other.
Self-driving technology is being developed to make driving easier for drivers, not to replace drivers.
Editor's Note
The emergence of autonomous driving technology makes us really feel that science and technology are progressing, if the automatic driving truck is fully popularized, then the truck driver is no longer just a driver, but also a technician, the knowledge that needs to be mastered is also more and more, and the threshold of the successive freight industry will be higher and higher.
So the question is, how many years do you think trucks will be away from true autonomous driving? (Text/Maggie Cheung)