It is mainly concentrated in six major scenarios: terminal distribution, unmanned sanitation, unmanned port, unmanned mining area, unmanned agricultural machinery, and unmanned connection.
Wen | the low-speed driverless newsroom
According to incomplete statistics from the New Strategic Unmanned Driving Industry Research Institute, in 2021, the domestic and foreign autonomous driving industry disclosed more than 200 important financing events, with a total financing of nearly 150 billion yuan (including IPOs). Among them, low-speed driverless product and solution providers have raised nearly 70 financings, exceeding 30 billion yuan.
Table 1: Financing of low-speed unmanned driving at home and abroad in 2021 (new strategy of low-speed unmanned driving, please correct the imperfections)
The above nearly 70 financings have been spent on 47 enterprises at home and abroad. Among them, there are 9 foreign enterprises and 39 domestic enterprises. (Tucson will have independent offices in Beijing and the United States in the future, which are counted separately)
Figure 1: Regional distribution of financing enterprises
From the perspective of regional distribution of enterprises, the development of foreign driverless industry is still leading europe and the United States. Mainly in Europe and the United States, autonomous driving has budded early, whether it is in the promulgation of relevant policies, or in the road testing of autonomous vehicles, it is the earliest work on a global scale. Because of this, Europe and the United States set up a number of autonomous driving startups earlier, committed to using driverless technology to change people's production and lifestyle. For example, EasyMile in France was founded in 2014, Oxotica in the United Kingdom was founded in 2015, and Nuro in the United States was founded in 2016. Tucson Future, which has an independent office in the United States, was founded in 2015 and successfully listed in the United States in April 2021, becoming the "first stock in the global autonomous driving industry".
It is worth noting that the United States' Monarch Tractor, Burro, Serve Robotics has accumulated $85 million in financing, Bear Flag Robotics was acquired for $250 million, these 4 companies are engaged in the research and development of unmanned agricultural machinery products, which is inseparable from the high level of agricultural modernization in the United States, from sowing to harvesting to fully mechanized and automated.
In addition, As one of the cradles of the birth of global autonomous driving startups, Israel is a small country in the Middle East, but has developed more than 800 autonomous driving companies. Since most of Israel's autonomous driving companies are more focused on the development of a certain segment of core technology, such as domain controllers, lidar, deep learning chips, driverless car network security, etc., relatively few provide low-speed unmanned vehicle products and overall solutions. Among them, Blue White Robotics received $37 million in financing, mainly for the research and development of unmanned agricultural machinery.
Domestic enterprises are led by Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, followed by Jiangsu and Zhejiang. First of all, north, upper, guangzhou and shenzhen are key first-tier cities, far ahead of other cities in terms of economy, politics, culture, etc., and have a higher degree of acceptance of emerging technologies for autonomous driving, and the development of autonomous driving enterprises in these areas is also supported by policies. In particular, Beijing is also the capital, and in 2021, the first pilot zone with management policy innovation as the core was established in the country - the Beijing Intelligent Connected Vehicle Policy Pilot Zone, the first unmanned delivery vehicle operation management regulations in the country were introduced, and the first pilot project for the commercialization of autonomous driving travel services was opened, providing important guidance for the development of the autonomous driving industry in other cities across the country. It is reported that the safety mileage of road tests of autonomous vehicles in Beijing has exceeded 3.652 million kilometers. The number of license plates, test types, and open test road mileage of autonomous driving test vehicles in Beijing ranks among the top in the country.
Secondly, the development of autonomous driving enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, in addition to a better policy environment, to a certain extent, also benefits from the industrial structure and geographical resource advantages of this region and neighboring provinces and cities. The six companies that received financing this time, including Jiangsu Zhijia Technology, Mengzhi Technology, Zhitu Technology, Changxing Intelligence, and Zhejiang Hongjing Intelligent Driving and Feibu Technology, are mainly committed to the research and development of unmanned products and solutions in ports and mining areas. First, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are linhai, and between Shandong, Shanghai and Fujian provinces, Qingdao Port, Rizhao Port, Yangshan Port, Xiamen Yuanhai Terminal and other world-leading automated ports have been developed, giving autonomous driving enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang a strong condition to test and operate unmanned vehicles in ports.
Second, Jiangsu and Zhejiang are adjacent to Anhui. Anhui is rich in mineral resources, including energy minerals, metal minerals, non-metallic minerals, etc., with more than 1,000 mining areas. Among them, coal is the dominant mineral in Anhui, which has a significant position in the production and distribution of coal industry in East China, with more than 200 mining areas. Under the requirements of low-carbon, green and smart mining area construction in recent years, unmanned driving technology has gradually been introduced into mining areas, promoting the development of autonomous driving enterprises to unmanned mining areas.
Figure 2: Distribution of the time of establishment of financing enterprises
From the perspective of the time of establishment, nearly half of the 48 companies that received financing in 2021 were established in 2017-2018. These 21 companies have raised a total of 26 financings, with a total financing of nearly 10 billion yuan, and the highest round of rounds has reached the D round. The time of establishment of these enterprises coincides with the turning point when China began to pay attention to the development of autonomous driving technology, after several years of accumulation, they have grown to a more mature and more advanced stage in both technology iteration and product landing, entering the rising period of development, and most of the financing obtained by enterprises is used for product mass production, technology iteration, or from a single scene to a pluralistic scene to promote the landing of unmanned products. For example, Wenyuan Zhixing has gradually expanded the unmanned solution to the three fields of unmanned minibus, same-city freight, and RoboTaxi, Scitech Intelligent focuses on the development of medical distribution and unmanned sanitation, and Neolithic and Xingshen Intelligent further accelerate unmanned distribution, unmanned retail layout and so on.
Most of the 7 enterprises established in the past two years are financing tens of millions of yuan. In contrast, Si Nian Zhi Driving obtained two rounds of financing within one year, and the A round of financing reached the level of 100 million yuan, and also won the world's first port unmanned commercial payment order.
Figure 3: Distribution of major areas of financing enterprises
From the perspective of financing, it is mainly concentrated in the development of six major scenarios of terminal distribution, unmanned sanitation, unmanned ports, unmanned mining areas, unmanned agricultural machinery, and unmanned connection, and large-scale financing focuses on unmanned distribution and unmanned sanitation.
For example, in the field of distribution, Nuto received $600 million in Series D financing, Two Rounds of Financing of About RMB1.3 Billion, Neolithic B Round of Financing of HUNDREDs of Millions of RMB, and Two Rounds of Strategic Financing of Yishi Technology also received financing of more than RMB 1 billion, accelerating the development and landing of distribution products. Nuro received $600 million, the highest single round of financing in the end-of-life distribution sector and the highest in the low-speed driverless sector of the year (excluding IPOs). With the latest financing, Nuro has a market value of 8.6 billion US dollars, becoming a super unicorn in the field of unmanned delivery, which shows that unmanned delivery is favored by capital at home and abroad.
In the field of sanitation, Kuwa Robot received $250 million in financing, becoming the largest dark horse in the unmanned sanitation field in 2021. Gaoxian Robot's C round of financing reached 1.2 billion yuan, plus hundreds of millions of yuan before, Gaoxian Robot has received sufficient financial support for the commercial landing of unmanned sanitation and clean killing of a full range of products. In addition, Candela received 375 million yuan in financing, which is also higher in the disclosed financing amount.
On the whole, the rapid development of unmanned distribution, first, there is demand in the market, the demand for terminal distribution capacity is increasing, manpower supply is in short supply and the cost is high, and unmanned delivery vehicles can achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement while supplementing transportation capacity. Especially under the influence of the uncertain factors of the new crown pneumonia, unmanned vehicles can effectively reduce the contact of personnel with infection. Second, the product has advantages, unmanned vehicles are small in size, can be widely used in express delivery, supermarkets, takeaway and other industries, but also according to customer needs combined with retail functions, during the trial operation period is also safer than passenger cars, large trucks.
The development of unmanned sanitation is driven by cost reduction and efficiency increase, unmanned sanitation vehicles can operate 24 hours a day, independently, with manual operations, which can greatly improve the cleaning efficiency and fully meet the needs of high-frequency and large-area operations during the normalization of epidemic prevention and control. The second is conducive to the improvement of the structure of sanitation practitioners, the current sanitation industry is mostly old, low level of education personnel, with the disappearance of the mainland demographic dividend, the sanitation industry is difficult to have young people to join, the application of emerging technologies such as driverless technology, can help the sanitation industry to attract young labor to supplement in.
The development of the three major areas of unmanned ports, unmanned mining areas and unmanned agricultural machinery is due to the country's great attention to intelligent manufacturing, and vigorously advocates the intelligent and green and low-carbon development of ports, mining areas and agriculture from the national level. Judging from the construction of demonstration projects of smart ports, smart mining areas and smart farms in the mainland in recent years, the state encourages these industries to further improve the level of automation and intelligent production, which can not only ensure production safety, but also strengthen economic benefits.
In addition, the use of unmanned buses and unmanned shuttle buses will also be further developed in 2021, from parks and universities to carry people to circular bus toll operations. It is worth mentioning that the 100-meter unmanned shuttle bus officially entered the Nanchang Institute of Technology, becoming the first unmanned connection operation project in Jiangxi, which is also leading in the country.