Unmanned reconstruction of trunk logistics: pain points, models and industries

Image source @ Visual China

Text | Talk about AI

On last year's Robotaxi track, the story took many turns, such as Wenyuan Zhixing, Momenta and many other start-ups shifted gears and accelerated, frequently attacking the landing.

However, the Robotaxi circuit is not thriving, and the frequent departure of some of the top executives in the track last year also paved a haze for the commercialization of the track.

Not only the head companies such as Waymo and Cruise, which are backed by giants, frequently send news of executive departures, but also in the array of start-up technology companies, Xiaoma Zhixing has also left senior executives many times.

Among them, Sun Haowen, senior director of R&D of Xiaoma Zhixing, after leaving his post, is another stove, as one of the founders, set up a trunk logistics autonomous driving technology company Qianhang Technology, Tianyancha APP shows that it was only founded less than a year ago, the current valuation has exceeded 1 billion yuan, and at the end of last year, it got about 200 million yuan of strategic financing.

At the same time, in the subdivision track of trunk logistics, the first share of autonomous driving technology companies was also born, Tucson Future. This can't help but make people ask, when Robotaxi is gradually entering a protracted war, in the face of the patience of capital, trunk logistics, can carry another banner of autonomous driving?

The trunk logistics with wide prospects and easy landing are still sexy?

When we talk about a number of autonomous driving segments, it is inevitable to compare the Robotaxi tracks with the most promising and the most cutting-edge technical talents.

At present, the difficulty of landing Robotaxi has become the consensus of the industry, and the prospect is also not small and the landing is relatively easy, which is the two most recognized elements of the trunk logistics scenario in the autonomous driving industry.

On the one hand, Yiou Think Tank has calculated that the size of the mainland road freight market will reach 5.85 trillion yuan in 2021, and LTL and vehicle logistics will account for nearly 90% of the total market. The unmanned transformation of trunk logistics by automatic driving objectively has a huge trillion-scale market prospect.

On the other hand, on the ground, there are three characteristics of trunk logistics, one is that the future of cargo transportation will not involve the safety of personnel in the car, the second is that the highway scene is relatively closed, and the third is that the logistics and transportation route is relatively fixed, and the combination of several points is actually to reduce the first essence of automatic driving, safety risks, thus reflecting the advantages of easy landing of the scene.

In addition, Tan Qing said that AI believes that if Robotaxi meets the improved demand for online ride-hailing and taxis, then the reason why trunk logistics is favored by more and more technology companies is that autonomous driving is a rigid demand to solve the pain points of the traditional trunk logistics industry.

This is mainly reflected in the low entry threshold of the traditional trunk logistics industry, resulting in low industry barriers, which makes the contradiction between the cost structure and the business model increasingly prominent.

Let's first look at a data, according to yiou think tank, in the current road freight industry, small logistics companies and individual retail investors occupy a large market share, the two add up to 75%. In such a large and scattered market, the entry threshold is not high, coupled with the singleness of the operating elements of cargo transportation, resulting in serious disorderly competition in the industry, almost no bargaining power, and the phenomenon of price involution is serious.

Lin Xiao, a heavy truck owner of a small logistics company, told us, "(When the cargo owner is looking for transportation capacity) it is definitely who bids low to find whom, in order to maintain the competitiveness of the price, the phenomenon of the owner and the owner bypassing the company to make a 'private order' is also very common." ”

It is not difficult to find that countless car owners seem to have become the fuse that ignites this price inner coil chain, but Lin Xiao also told us:

"Who wants to reduce the price every day, is it not good to earn more?" But the big car is not cheap, many (car owners) into this line are looking for (logistics) companies to buy a car, on the back of the loan for a day without running is a loss. Many companies give the order is not enough, can only desperately take orders, now are ON THE APP to receive orders, want to grab the order can only reduce the price, the back may establish long-term cooperation. ”

As Lin Xiao said, in the business model and market environment of a large number of small and micro logistics enterprises, not only small and micro logistics enterprises have become "middlemen", but also large and medium-sized logistics companies have not been able to occupy the market share for many years. In the long run, in terms of the overall profit of the industry, the pain points will be difficult to alleviate.

Not only that, at the macro level, data from the Yiou think tank shows that fuel + driver compensation accounts for 43.41% of China's road freight costs in 2020. Standing today, the world is in a critical period of energy transformation, and the profession of truck driver is also facing the current situation of human resources.

If autonomous driving can penetrate into the trunk logistics scene, it will undoubtedly bring a new turnaround to the price chain of the industry's internal volume.

Unmanned business model "butterfly effect"

If Robotruck can achieve large-scale commercialization in the future, how will the industry's business model shift? We have made a big guess around this issue in the Tanqing Ai readership.

The following is Tan Qing said that the unmanned trunk logistics business model after the AI collation is conjectured:

First of all, if the cost of Roboturck can reach a controllable range in the future, two new business models may be formed: the contractor model for small and micro logistics enterprises and the supplier model for large and medium-sized logistics enterprises.

Contractor model for small and micro logistics enterprises

Among the small and micro logistics enterprises with the largest stock in the mainland, most of the enterprises have three key players, namely demand-side cargo owners, supplier-side car owners and logistics enterprises as hubs.

For this part of the long-tail enterprises, the most important profit model at present is to rely on the main business of cargo transportation, in addition, there is also a profit by recruiting car owners to expand the fleet and provide loan services for new car owners as Lin Xiao said.

It is not difficult to find that in fact, one of the factors that cause car owners to roll in the price is financial loan services, after all, under the pressure of loans, car owners often need more cargo owners to make up for the amount of orders.

If there is no one in the future, the three key players of this part of the enterprise will change, namely the demand side cargo owners, the supply side technology companies and the logistics companies.

Small and micro logistics companies are often not well funded, and it is difficult to form their own fleets, which can also be seen from the traditional asset-light model of recruiting car owners. In the future, under the contractor model, autonomous driving technology companies can provide capacity services for logistics companies, charged by mileage and weight, and logistics companies are responsible for docking with cargo owners.

In this model, although autonomous driving technology companies need to take the asset-heavy model, data as a moat for future technology, the asset-heavy model will be one of the excellent solutions for collecting data. At the same time, small and micro logistics enterprises are often small, which means that technology companies do not need to have very large capacity reserves, and heavy assets do not mean that huge investment is required.

For small and micro logistics enterprises, this model not only maintains an asset-light model, but also can well avoid the loss of business and the weakening of price competitiveness caused by the loss of business and the weakening of price competitiveness caused by the owner of the traditional model to take private orders. At the same time, compared with the traditional model, this part of the enterprise does not need to bear security risks, and in the future, more energy can be put into the operation and maintenance of cargo owners, so as to continuously improve transportation efficiency.

From the perspective of the industry, under this model, the future vast small and micro logistics enterprise market will be dominated by the regular army composed of logistics and technology enterprises, and the problem of disorderly competition in price will be greatly alleviated, so that the industry will embark on a benign development.

However, under the contractor model, some logistics companies that rely on financial loans for profit in the future will face the challenge of business transformation, and whether the future transportation business can improve compared with the dual-business profitability of the traditional model still needs to be verified by further commercialization.

Supplier model for large and medium-sized logistics enterprises

For large and medium-sized logistics enterprises, in the future, autonomous driving technology companies can play the role of technology suppliers, and the transportation supply and demand of logistics enterprises and cargo owners in the traditional model will then derive a new layer of technology supply and demand relationship.

In the traditional model, large and medium-sized logistics companies with sufficient funds often take the asset-heavy model, personally forming a fleet and recruiting drivers, which also requires a lot of energy to operate the fleet.

The supplier model of technology enterprises will unify the costs of logistics enterprises such as manpower and fleet operation into a technical service fee that needs to be paid to technology enterprises in the future, which will likely derive three subdivisions:

First, the main engine factory for customers, this program is actually a bit similar to Huawei's model of entering the market to build cars, that is, technology companies provide automatic driving technology solutions for the main engine factory to transform traditional logistics trucks, which can be charged a one-time transformation fee, and can also be deeply cooperated to adopt a sharing model when selling cars in the future.

The second is that technology companies cooperate directly with logistics companies to provide unmanned iterative technology for their fleets, and are responsible for the later software updates and technical personnel training services, charging related fees.

The third is to take the "iron triangle" model similar to Robotaxi's current existence, the main engine factory is responsible for vehicle manufacturing, the technology company is responsible for automatic driving technology, the logistics company provides the supply scenario, each specialty is specialized, and the profit is shared by the tripartite consultation.

The advantages of this supplier model are mainly reflected in the fact that it is more suitable for serving large customers, which can help large and medium-sized logistics enterprises to achieve in-depth unmanned transformation without being too passive, after all, the fleet investment of large and medium-sized logistics enterprises is often very large, and they cannot easily accept the contracting model.

In the face of large and medium-sized logistics enterprises that are much larger than small and micro enterprises, technology companies can also take the asset-light model in this mode to improve their anti-risk ability.

Industrial synergy is both a problem and an opportunity

The pain points of the industry exist objectively, and the future business model can also be traced, which brings fertile ground for the autonomous driving start-ups that currently have a layout on the trunk logistics track.

At present, the players who are laid out on the autonomous driving track of trunk logistics are roughly divided into three camps, namely FAW Jiefang, SAIC Hongyan and other OEMs, JD.com, Ali and other technology giants, and many start-up technology companies such as Tucson Future.

Whether it is a main engine factory or an Internet giant, the current mainstream layout model is mostly based on "self-research + investment and acquisition", and for players such as Rookie Wrap and JD Logistics, it is mainly from the needs of business collaboration.

For the main engine factory, the layout of automatic driving is a defensive battle in the face of intelligent transformation, after all, if you want to achieve automatic driving, the chassis line control degree of the vehicle often needs to reach a high requirement, in this regard, the current truck wire control degree of European and American countries is far better than the domestic, which is the domestic truck main engine factory is currently in urgent need of strength.

In terms of start-up technology enterprises, among the current domestic Robotruck players, many players such as Zhijia Technology, Wincher Technology, and Mainline Technology have entered the critical stage of small-scale road testing, but for this part of the players, the current degree of openness of mainland road testing is still low, until the end of last year, the first section of the mainland highway to automatic driving was opened.

Although Robotruck is theoretically easier to land than Robotaxi, players on the current track still need technology and time to precipitate.

Let's look at Tucson Future, known as the "first stock of autonomous driving", was first founded in China and the United States, but whether it is in the company's senior management team or business focus, Tucson's future layout weight in the United States is greater than that in China. For tucson in the future, there are objective advantages in the layout of truck autonomous driving in the United States.

Not only is it easier to obtain high-wire control trucks, in terms of the supply of components such as lidar, sensors, chips, etc., European and American companies such as Velodyne, Bosch, NVIDIA and other companies have also entered the market earlier or developed more maturely, which has led to a long period of time in the United States Robotruck road test open scale, the degree is significantly better than the domestic, Tucson in the future also to a certain extent to get the relevant dividends in the US road test policy.

However, on the other hand, too much layout in the United States is also a double-edged sword for Tucson's future. In the face of the current tense Sino-US relations, as a technology company listed in the United States, it continues to cultivate the US market, and it will risk losing the Chinese market. At the same time, the current United States is not a robotruck pure land, Tucson in the future there are Aurora, Waymo Via, Gatik and other competitors.

Back in China again, in addition to the current objective disadvantages of mainland Robotruck in terms of supply chain and pre-emptiveness, Tan Qing said that AI believes that if Robotruck wants to achieve real scale commercialization, there is another problem that cannot be ignored, that is, replenishment. But just as the rising black sesame seeds and horizons come to fill the gap in mainland autonomous driving chips, the other side of the problem often means a huge opportunity for industrial synergy.

Chen Quanshi, a professor at Tsinghua University, has publicly stated that taxis, buses, logistics vehicles, terminals, mines, transport vehicles at construction sites, etc., can only use fast charging or rapid replacement battery pack replacement methods to supplement electrical energy.

Li Xin, an analyst in the automotive industry, also told us, "The logistics industry pays attention to efficiency, and after the electrification of heavy trucks, compared with traditional fuel trucks, the charging mode will expose a very large pain point, and the power exchange mode objectively exists rigid demand." ”

Tan Qing said that AI believes that although automatic driving is a technology-intensive track, automatic driving itself still has strong application attributes, and therefore, there needs to be a balance between paving and doing depth.

For trunk logistics autonomous driving, the future of technical in-depth mining is undoubtedly a long-term lesson, but in the industrial synergy level such as supply chain, replenishment and even truck service areas, there will also be huge industrial relevance value to be tapped by more industrial chain players.

Write at the end:

Just like the potential opportunities for industrial synergy in trunk logistics, the technological iteration of any industry will often be accompanied by more or less "butterfly effect", just like at the birth of the mobile Internet, how many people can think that online ride-hailing and takeaway can burst out of today's energy?

But there are also concerns about this "butterfly effect", if the future trucks are unmanned, drivers may face collective unemployment. However, the owner of the truck, Lin Xiao, told us that he now has three cars and wants his children to take over in the future, but due to the professional working environment, intensity and high-risk nature, the children have been reluctant to inherit their father's business.

Tan Qing said that AI believes that what technology has to do is often not to erase productivity, but to liberate truck drivers like Lin Xiao, but also to create more high-paid technical positions with better environments and lower dangers for Lin Xiao's children, and now generation Z has more and more highly educated talents emerging every year, which is undoubtedly a virtuous circle.

After all, every scientific and technological force that can liberate productive forces is worthy of our expectations.