Today, self-driving cars have gradually integrated into our daily lives, but the industry expects that the commercial application of this technology on the open road may not be realized in 10 to 20 years.
While the commercialization prospects of autonomous driving technology on open roads are not yet clear, in closed scenarios, the technology has become a part of human work and even life.
According to the "2021 China Mining Autonomous Driving Research Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") published by Yiou Think Tank, the current autonomous driving in the field of cargo commercial vehicles includes six mainstream application scenarios: mining area scenarios, port scenarios, logistics parks, airport scenarios, trunk logistics and terminal logistics.
Among them, high-level autonomous driving technology is less difficult to apply in mining area scenarios, and it is easier to achieve commercial application. Therefore, the mining area scenario has become the main scenario for the commercial application of autonomous driving.
At present, in the overseas mining area autonomous driving commercial landing market, Caterpillar and Komatsu are in a leading position in the industry: Caterpillar has 342 unmanned vehicles in 2020, slightly higher than the 260 Komatsu; but in terms of cumulative transportation weight, in 2020, the cumulative transportation weight of Komatsu autonomous driving will reach 3 billion tons, higher than Caterpillar's 2.5 billion tons.
In the domestic market, autonomous driving technology in mining areas is also developing rapidly based on the dual factors of policy and market environment.
From the perspective of national policies, in 2016, the State Council issued the Opinions on Resolving Excess Capacity in the Coal Industry and Achieving Development Out of Difficulties (hereinafter referred to as the Opinions), and took the lead in carrying out pilot work in the coal and steel industries.
According to the requirements of the "Opinions", domestic small coal mines and protected areas and other overlapping coal mines have been closed according to law, and the number of large mines with energy-saving and environmental protection characteristics has continued to increase.
As of 2018, the number of large mines on the mainland reached 4,324, up from 4,200 in 2017. The increase of large-scale environmental protection mines also provides a good introduction environment for the development of autonomous driving technology.
Yiou Think Tank believes that from a market perspective, the development factor of autonomous driving technology in China's mining areas lies in the increasing attention to safety issues and the decline in the price of core components.
Among them, safety issues are the most important driver of autonomous driving in Chinese mines.
The "Report" pointed out that the mine environment is harsh and has a high safety risk in the process of mine vehicle travel. During transportation, the bumps in the road are very easy to cause rollovers, slips and other phenomena. In the unloading process, the discharge site is mostly a deep ditch of 20-30 meters, and the risk of rollover is extremely large. According to statistics, from 2015 to 2019, there were 1212 accidents in the mining area, and the death toll reached 2137.
If a safety accident occurs in the mining area and causes death, the mining area to which it belongs needs to stop production and rectify, and the mining area involved will suffer losses of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan, and even the mining license will be revoked, and the manager will also bear criminal liability.
Therefore, through the landing of automatic driving technology, labor costs can be effectively reduced, thereby reducing the probability of safety accidents in mines.
In addition, another reason for the rapid development of autonomous driving technology in mining areas is that the price of lidar, a major accessory, has fallen, making large-scale commercialization a foundation.
At present, mainstream manufacturers continue to lower prices, and Velodyne has reduced the official price of lidar from $17,900 in 2017 to $600 in 2021.
At the same time, traditional T1 (Tier 1 manufacturing suppliers) companies such as Bosch, Continental, Aptiv and start-ups have also entered the market, and the supply of the market has increased greatly, making the price have a further downward basis. Moreover, the lidar manufactured by Chinese manufacturers began to participate in the market competition, and its price was roughly 20% of the price of lidar in Europe and the United States.
Therefore, based on national policies and market environment, the scale of the autonomous driving market in China's mining areas will grow significantly in the future. According to the survey of Yiou Think Tank, the scale of China's mining autonomous driving technology service market will increase from 342 million yuan in 2021 to 12.9 billion yuan in 2030, while the market size of autonomous driving transportation services in mining areas will increase from 12.065 billion yuan in 2021 to 391.2 billion yuan in 2030.
In addition, regarding the future development trend of automatic driving technology, Yiou Think Tank believes that in the future, smart mines need to realize real-time perception of full-time, time-space and multi-source information in mines, fully automated operations at the production site, and build a full-process human-machine-ring-tube digital interconnection to operate efficiently and collaboratively; after completing the automation of the difficult transportation links, the autonomous driving service providers in the mining area will have the opportunity to go deep into other links to achieve automated and intelligent solutions for the whole mine.
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