"Digital capacity + automatic driving" is hot, how will it develop in the next two years?

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What opportunities will there be in the future of "digital capacity + autonomous driving"? How should the next two years develop? Pan Yonggang, President of Rogo Research Institute, discussed with Tu Qiang, Vice President and CTO of Shiqiao Group, Zhou Yonggang, Founder and CEO of One Station, Sheng Hui, Deputy General Assembly Of Sales and Operations of Zhijia Technology, Liu Yunfei, Assistant To President of China Storage Zhiyun / President of strategic research institute, and Yu Chao, Senior Director of Xidi Intelligent Driving.

On December 17, Rogo held the "2021 4th China Logistics Science and Technology Innovation Enterprise Annual Conference and Logistics Capital Summit", which was compiled according to the on-site shorthand.

The following is the full text of the "Roundtable Forum":

Pan Yonggang: The guests of this roundtable forum are basically in two areas, on the one hand, Zhijia Technology and Xidi Intelligent Driving are in the field of automatic driving; on the other hand, Shiqiao, One Station, and Zhongzhu Zhiyun are very leading in the digitalization of logistics and freight.

Today, from the innovation of logistics technology, we can see that the logistics field in the market is now divided into two major directions, on the one hand, digitalization, on the other hand, intelligence. I would like to ask several guests to share their views on "How do you see the trend of digitalization and intelligence gradually accelerating and developing in the field of logistics?"

We have different perspectives, and here we hope that through the collision of the views of the guests, we will have a more complete understanding of the application and future of digitalization and intelligence in the field of logistics.

Tu Qiang: The logistics industry is the largest industry in China, and in the past decade or so, the concept of digitalization has been mentioned by many people, and there have been many successful companies in the past decade, including express delivery, express transportation, and vehicle and cargo matching companies in the past. After the epidemic, China's digitalization continues to intensify, we look back at the logistics industry, this industry is still very traditional, although we have achieved very efficient digitization in express delivery and express transportation, but we return to the factory, the great synergy of this industry is still extremely inefficient, including the long-term effect of the supply chain, so that supply and demand do not match, these points have not been completely solved.

In the past, we were all doing standardized products, but in the next decade or twenty years we need a deeper understanding of the industry, including how to make the industry documents more uniform, hardware capabilities such as autonomous driving, to make the industry more digital. Logistics digitalization has just begun, and we still have a long way to go.

Pan Yonggang: We have already tried on the road of "logistics + Internet", and some companies have indeed shown a corresponding market position. However, the process of digital transformation is far from reaching its peak, and there are still many things that can be tapped, such as bulk and manufacturing, and there are still many things that can be done on the industrial side.

Zhou Yonggang: What do you think of the digitalization and intelligentization trend of the logistics industry? I am convinced that all industries, including logistics, will be digitized. I have visited a lot of manufacturing factories this year, including some local governments, and I think the most common word everyone talks about is "intelligent transformation and digital transformation", and I see a lot of smart factories, automated factories, including digital transformation.

Logistics is to serve the manufacturing industry, business flow, when our upstream customers are engaged in "intelligent change of the number of transfers", we as a supporting service of logistics, must also complete this transformation, this is the upstream driving force to force you to transform. And digitalization is now obviously migrating from the C-end to the B-end, but because the internal consumption of the B-end industry is more complicated, it will be more difficult. But from a trend point of view, as more data, including a lot of internal friction, can also be precipitated, this is the power of digitalization. Coupled with some algorithms, let us find that the efficiency problems and bottleneck problems that were originally thought to be many traditional industries can actually be broken.

Pan Yonggang: I mentioned a few key words, intelligent change of digital rotation, industry internal consumption, although the industry is different, we still firmly believe that everyone in this industry is doing intelligent transformation of the number of rotation. Whether it is in the logistics industry, or the role of service, or the role of synergy with other fields, we also have to go through such a process.

Cheng Shenghui: Tu Zong and Zhou Zong are experts in this industry, and we are just getting started in the logistics industry. In recent years, I have been talking about smart logistics, I personally feel that intelligence and digitalization is an inevitable trend, and at the same time feel that digitalization is the premise of intelligence, if you want to achieve intelligence, you must first digitize, and then you have the basic conditions to achieve the next step of intelligence.

If we have the cloud, without the support of big data, automatic driving is also very difficult to achieve. What we do is only one of the implementation units of smart logistics, the vehicle is intelligent, plus the vehicle-road collaboration, etc., the ground network, the skynet all add up, this is what we understand, the ultimate intelligent logistics.

Pan Yonggang: Digitalization is the premise of intelligence, including autonomous driving companies like Zhijia, who also believe that if there is no cloud, big data, and computing power, it may be difficult for our automatic driving to directly produce corresponding value and effect. In this process, although it will take a few years to see the real application of L3 and L4 levels, in this process, the step of intelligence has begun to move forward rapidly in the field of vehicles.

Liu Yunfei: The digitalization and intelligent upgrading of the entire logistics industry is an inevitable trend. From the emergence of the original smart phone in 2010, the emergence of mobile Internet technology, including 3G, 4G technology, to the current 5G, the trend of digital upgrading has gradually begun. For the transportation of bulk commodities, the most traditional drivers will also use QQ and WeChat to transmit information.

Customers use our platform system, the original logistics to find the car, through our technical means, through the digital service team and service system, greatly save the time and efficiency of manual car search, and ultimately help customers to comprehensively reduce logistics costs and transportation. At the same time, we also achieve customer ERP, WMS system docking with relatively large enterprises, comprehensive solutions and services, and fast efficiency. In addition, we provide a series of logistics financial products, logistics insurance and other services, are used by APP system suppliers and drivers, including services, digital unions, online driver homes, we integrate mobile Internet, AI, big data, blockchain and other technical services to customers.

Whether it is digitalization, intelligence or upgrading in the logistics industry, this era has arrived.

Yu Chao: The digitization and intelligence of logistics, China has become the world's largest logistics freight market in 2019, especially like road transport, accounting for 70% of logistics transport. Whether it is digital or intelligent, this is an eternal issue. Our company has done some new scene applications and new technology development in this area, using our automatic driving technology, such as for safety problems in the field of logistics and transportation, we have developed a true 360-degree panoramic surround view system with the perspective of God to help drivers minimize safety and accidents. From the perspective of the efficiency of stowage, we use our own advanced AI algorithm to develop an intelligent recipe system, its logic is to build a three-dimensional model, carefully measure the volume of goods in the box, combined with the scheduling system behind the transportation platform, to maximize the loading rate.

Digitalization and intelligence are indeed very big issues, through the practical applications and scenarios of our company in this field, and ultimately around cost reduction and efficiency improvement, to help industrial upgrading.

Pan Yonggang: How do you now see the value that your field brings to customers? What kind of development trend will this field, scenario and business form be in the next two years?

Mr. Yu, just now you also mentioned that you have a safe corresponding solution, there is a load. From this point of view, other families talk about automatic driving is more I am L3, L2, L4, I don't know if you have to solve the problem of safety and efficiency in the dimension of automatic driving, application and development, or like other homes, consider how to apply the car through the operation of the way, what kind of stage do you see the development of automatic driving?

Yu Chao: We made an example from the perspective of application, our company's original intention is to do automatic driving, but the legal tolerance, cost acceptance, and technological maturity, there is a very large gap between domestic and foreign countries. As we all know, the liberalization of foreign markets is slightly ahead of China, and our country is also very supportive of the application of new technologies, so our company continues to complete automated tests on some open roads, in some specific scenarios, like parks, mining cards, including the automatic formation of park extensions, we have done a lot of technical iterations, including orders signed in recent years, have completed the iterative accumulation of one generation, two generations to three generations of products.

For safety and efficiency, this is the dimensionality reduction application of our automatic driving technology, which can be well combined with the logistics industry, and is currently affected by laws and regulations, and has made dimensionality reduction applications for cost and product maturity. Autonomous driving is always a sea of stars.

Pan Yonggang: The application of autonomous driving has already had a solution and has landed for Xidi Intelligent Driving.

Yu Chao: We remodeled the world's largest project of more than 2,000 buses in Changsha last year, which is also the application of automatic driving, including today's guests talking about carbon peaking, and we use autonomous driving technology on the bus active priority system.

Pan Yonggang: Cheng Zong, because you chose the trunk line, what do you think the competitive situation in this field will be in the next few years? To what extent?

Cheng Shenghui: We only do the automatic driving of trunk logistics, 2021 is the first year of automatic driving of trunk logistics, whether it is a start-up or a former head company, the car factory that changed the original head is doing this in the next scene. We were the first to mass-produce the L3 autonomous vehicle and put it into actual commercial operation. Now the effect is obvious, mainly in several aspects.

1. Security. We have always believed that machines are better and safer than people, because people will be tired after a long time, and people will be emotional. Fuel consumption is more obviously reduced, basically can do about 10%, automatic driving is more stable than human driving, fuel consumption.

2. The use of human resources is reduced. The more prominent point of automatic driving itself is whether it can remove people in the end, and people in all industries are asking, since you call automatic driving, can you remove people in the end. My answer is that I can't get rid of people at this moment, which is a very regrettable point. Not to mention whether technology can remove people, domestic laws and regulations and foreign laws and regulations are not allowed to remove people now. Second, although we can't remove people, we can reduce people in a certain scene, which is relatively certain.

Some small convoys and C-end within a thousand kilometers, even three thousand kilometers is also a unit price, which is not within the scope of our discussion. Many of them are more than five hundred kilometers on the double price, and I can make a unit price from the double price in the scene within a thousand kilometers, which has practical economic value. This is also very useful for doing this without sacrificing safety and efficiency.

The next step is L4, which is technically completely unmanned on the high speed, and the driver can theoretically get off the bus. Our own judgment is that by 2025, the laws and regulations will still not support no one, this car is still occupied, as for that era, this person is A2 photos, B2 photos or safety officers, depending on laws and regulations. At least one thing can be sure that with L4 technology, drive it as an L3 car, 90% of the scenes can achieve unit price, which will be very large than the unit price of today's specific scenes. At that time, I believe that automatic driving will no longer discuss the reliability of new energy as it is now, just like today's discussion of whether new energy is reliable or not, it is meaningless, and now new energy is already an irreversible direction. Give us another three or four years, basically this state, I personally believe that these four words can be very meaningful to do this.

Pan Yonggang: So now it's more about assisted driving, and the next thing you see is automatic driving, and then there's driverless driving in the back. That's why the field is particularly hot right now.

Shiqiao also has some reserves in terms of automatic driving, and Shiqiao itself has also done a very good job in digitalization, I would like to ask Mr. Tu to introduce it, do you think that in the next two years, in terms of landing applications, what will you focus on?

Tu Qiang: Shiqiao has long wanted to make a breakthrough at the level of new energy automatic driving, and last year the whole group began to do a lot of industry stratification, in fact, the logistics industry is a very interesting social collaboration, which is divided into three layers in the social collaboration, the first layer is the asset management layer, including how the three-party company and the upstream to do the corresponding settlement. Second, the fulfillment layer, how the driver pulls the goods from A to B. Third, the service layer, there are many three-party special lines, how do they ensure settlement, how to ensure service quality. So in the past decade and the next decade, our strategic direction has been to do around these three levels.

First, based on assets, we are the largest tripartite financial leasing company in China, and last year we invested more than 30 billion yuan in supply chain finance + truck finance.

The second level, digital-related applications, we will find how to better serve the three parties and private lines in the industry, which is an eternal topic in the industry. This year, Shiqiao also opened a new digital platform, the core logic of this platform is to better empower the three-party enterprises, the core point of the so-called empowerment is to let them reduce costs and increase efficiency, so that they have better service output, so this is the second thing we do in the logistics scene.

The third level, for the driver, we can no longer squeeze them, their efficiency has been extremely efficient, we really want to do at the performance level, we can only do unmanned, new energy, in July Shiqiao and Baidu together released a new strategy, we should be the world's first forward design of the new energy truck, the front redesign, resulting in a wind resistance coefficient of 0.3. We have also redesigned the cockpit, the axle, motor, energy level has been redesigned, our core logic is to hope to be based on our performance, finance, logistics scenarios, to truly provide the industry with a full-life cycle solution, rather than landing at a single point.

Pan Yonggang: Shiqiao has hundreds of thousands of heavy-duty truck financial leasing companies every year, accounting for a very high proportion. In addition, he is also a relatively large fleet operation company, but also provides transportation-level financial services for third-party companies, and is also an important enterprise in the field of network conference. At the level of autonomous driving, they're rebuilding a car. Now when we talk about automatic driving, most of them are on the basis of the original car to do front or rear loading, he is not from the beginning to the end of the entire reconstruction.

As mentioned earlier, many technology companies will go down in the future and build their own new production lines, rather than playing with the current big players. So the autonomous driving asset itself will be reconstructed from beginning to end.

Mr. Zhou, you are doing logistics digitalization, as Tu just said, this chain is very long, in such a long chain, you also have to introduce how we through the broker model, how through our and back-end service providers of collaboration, can not only open the front-end sales port, but also be able to deliver the operation execution, but also can do a great job. In this link, looking ahead to the years ahead, what do you think are the core points that will bring significant changes to the industry?

Zhou Yonggang: Every year, I will read the "Supply Chain & Contract Logistics Development Report" released by Rogo Research, which has a survey of cargo owners, if you look at the annual survey results. The first demand is to reduce costs, which is a little different from the past. If you put it before 2015, all party A will not talk to you about the price, because Party A's life is very good, so it is generally to renew the contract at the point, everyone talks about the problem of service, the problem of experience, these two years are very obvious, all the cargo owners are looking at the cost, because his life is not good, his channels are changing, his performance is changing, and the biggest value of logistics companies is to help him save costs.

What we do is to help cargo owners optimize costs through efficiency improvement, such as future automatic driving, or the underlying technology changes, it is possible to improve the driver's human efficiency and other things, I have 2.7 million drivers, from the ticket tax this thing can help my cargo owners save a lot of money. Everyone is helping the owner to optimize from different angles, the final customer chooses you, the very important point is that I have optimized a few points for you this year, and it is ultimately related to money.

The other is related to customer experience, for example, today we as individual consumers, I send a courier, you don't have to stare at where that piece is running every day. The problem of upstream and downstream, the problem of coordination, and whether we can liberate people, everyone has been talking about it, there is an effect, but there is no final realization I can let a Party A cargo owner open the system at any time, you can see the dynamics of each of my tickets. We ship so much cargo, you don't tell people where the goods have gone.

After we have done the automation and intelligence of the vehicle, I may solve it on the trunk line. But what about the end? Everyone step by step to that direction, in the future let all our cargo owners not so hard, logistics company customer service is not so hard, we all solve the main problems just fine, these two points are the direction of our future efforts.

Pan Yonggang: My understanding is how to make cargo owners and logistics companies happy to work, and can use digital and intelligent technology to help us reduce costs, and further improve our service level.

Mr. Liu, now everyone is very concerned about network freight, the management measures expire immediately, what direction will the follow-up go? Including the process of digitization in the field of freight, network freight is now only part of the problem solved, there are still many problems in general, how we use digital ways to help customers solve both the problems they see now and the problems they really care about.

Liu Yunfei: From our company's point of view, from the industry's most well-known network freight business, it is indeed still relatively leading in the industry. Our company is good, several guests here are good, although we are different in the logistics market segment, do things differently, I agree with Zhou Dong's point of view, there are commonalities, to customer value has three points.

1. Reduce costs and increase efficiency.

2. Intelligent and visual management of the whole process.

3. Freight safety guarantee system.

First, reduce costs and increase efficiency. From the perspective of the general environment, the national level has entered the era of high-quality development, the good days are gone, the original blue ocean market is everywhere, and all walks of life may become the Red Sea market. Manufacturing companies themselves also have the need for digital transformation and upgrading, and at the same time, for the logistics of relatively extensive management, they also need digitalization, and if he can't do it, he will find a company like us to help him do it. In the case of the customers we have done, the average logistics cost is reduced by about 8%-10%.

Some are through a smart pairing method as well as an all-round team. Including logistics and transportation costs, including logistics management personnel costs, after using our system he can sit at the desk, some of our customers originally their own circulation is through QQ and WeChat group, his order to us is also through QQ and WeChat group, and then on the system. In the future, we will systematize all these links, and this link can be much faster, from a few hours to a few minutes, dozens of minutes.

At the same time, after the systematization, the efficiency is greatly improved, and through some system docking methods, it was originally called and mouthed. In addition, take screenshots of different system quotes and start business. Now I feel very traditional when I hear it, and it still exists.

Second, the whole process of visualization and intelligent management. This is also related to technological upgrading, just like our platform uses Beidou positioning technology, including GPS and so on. After these positioning technologies came out, they were combined with our platform, like some of our customers with hundreds of cars a day. Like some large cement leading enterprise customers, he has hundreds of cement plants below, and the situation of transportation can be seen in one interface. The technology is now relatively mature, and when the technology is applied to the scene, the convenience of the customer is greatly improved.

Third, the freight safety guarantee system. From our point of view, one is the offline control team, but also insurance applications and insurance companies cooperation, there are friends and experts who do unmanned driving companies, they do it through another way, from our point of view, we provide it in all directions through insurance, monitoring and so on.

What is the line behind it, that is, using digital and intelligent various mature technologies to apply to the new scenarios of logistics through reorganization. Technology must be closely integrated with customer needs, including cost, efficiency, safety, and all aspects.

Pan Yonggang: Please give you some enlightenment or reference in one sentence.

Yu Chao: Xidi Intelligent Driving is willing to use its own technology and product advantages to help the logistics industry to further upgrade the digitization and intelligence, and we also hope to work together with everyone on site and online.

Liu Yunfei: As a central enterprise intelligent logistics technology enterprise, from the perspective of our company, we need to take the smooth circular economy and protect the national economy and people's livelihood as our responsibility, and work with logistics colleagues to promote the upgrading of digitalization and intelligence, and contribute to the strength of all of us.

Cheng Shenghui: We hope that through our own efforts, logistics companies will feel that the four words "automatic driving" really play a role and have positive economic value. At the same time, we hope to make the whole industry better through our technology.

Zhou Yonggang: I quote a sentence from our partner, who said that the shortcut is the farthest distance in the world, so we return to the essence of business and the original intention of entrepreneurship, and this market will definitely reward those companies that really create value for customers.

Tu Qiang: Let me launch an initiative, the biggest threshold for digitalization in the logistics industry comes from closure, and the transportation capacity of all companies is their own, so the most core point of digitalization in the entire logistics industry, whether it is us or all the technology companies here, can really take the openness of the logistics industry as the most necessary premise for digitalization.

Pan Yonggang: Thank you very much to the five guests here for participating in this discussion, just like Mr. Tu said, we also respond to this initiative, advocating everyone's application of advanced technology, understanding of advanced technology, including our resources, with an open mind, to jointly promote the rapid development of this industry, thank you!

Author | Logclub

Source | Logistics salon

This article is the personal opinion of the author and does not represent the position of the logistics salon