Editor's note: "He Xiongsong takes you to read the commercialization of autonomous driving scenarios", takes you to understand the commercialization of different scenarios in the field of automatic driving, and objectively and rationally interprets the evolution of investment strategies behind commercialization.
This column is jointly produced by He Xiongsong, executive general manager of Chentao Capital, and the heart of the car, and is updated every Saturday, and the content is exclusively authorized to be released by the heart of the car.
Hello, I am He Xiongsong, welcome to the sixth lecture of "He Xiongsong Takes You to Read the Commercialization of Autonomous Driving Scenes".
In this lecture, we will enter the analysis of the port autonomous driving scenario.
Next, let's understand the current situation of autonomous transportation in ports and what are the development prospects of related companies? At the same time, what are the pain points and business progress of the port autonomous driving industry? With these questions in mind, let's explore them together.
01
Scenario introduction
The loading and unloading process of containers in ports usually involves three operational links:
1) The goods pass through the shore bridge equipment and are loaded and unloaded on the dock surface;
2) Goods are transported between the dock surface and the yard through horizontal transport equipment;
3) The goods pass through the yard bridge equipment and are loaded and unloaded in the yard.
Container horizontal transport refers to the operation link 2) the goods are transported between the dock surface and the yard according to the specified route.
Source: Autonomous Driving Application Scenarios and Commercialization Paths (2020) China Electric Vehicle 100 People's Association
There are currently three main solutions for global horizontal transportation automation:
1) Automatic guided transport vehicle, that is, AGV (AutomaticGuidedVehicle), of which the automatic guided transport vehicle with lift function is L-AGV. The AGV lays a magnetic nail under the travel line and can travel according to the established line.
2) Unmanned Straddle Carrier ASC (Autonomous StraddleCarrier), which is based on the traditional straddle carrier, equipped with radar, cameras and other hardware, using automatic driving technology to achieve unmanned transformation of straddle carriers.
3) Unmanned collection card, based on the traditional container truck (collection card), equipped with lidar, camera, millimeter wave radar, positioning module and gyroscope and other hardware, the use of automatic driving technology to achieve unmanned transformation.
Among them, AGV needs to pre-lay a lot of magnetic nails in the construction of the terminal, and the conventional reinforced concrete structure cannot be used in the civil construction of the terminal.
The cross-transport vehicle can only meet the stacking of 1-3 container heights, and is generally used in container terminals in Europe and the United States, with limited domestic terminal space and few cross-transport vehicle applications.
Unmanned collection cards do not require special navigation tracks, and their application to container terminal operations does not require much terminal modification (especially the civil part), so it is more suitable for old terminals.
I believe that driverless collection cards will become the main direction of intelligent transformation of ports.
02
Market size measurement: from the port to the trunk line
China's container throughput in 2019 totaled 261 million TEUs.0 million. At horizontal transportation of 20 yuan / TEU, the port horizontal transportation market is about 5 billion yuan per year.
At present, Xiamen Far Sea Automated Terminal, Qingdao Port Fully Automated Terminal and Shanghai Ocean Mountain Deepwater Port Phase IV Automated Terminal have achieved horizontal transportation automation through AGV solutions, and the total annual throughput of the three automated terminals is more than 5 million boxes.
The automated penetration rate of the port container horizontal transportation market is less than 2%, and the vast majority of traditional terminals still use the method of manned card collection.
Port autonomous driving companies can extend to the trunk line scene in the future, according to the previous introduction, trunk automatic driving has a trillion yuan of market space.
03
Pain points in the market
(1) High cost
As of 2019, there are 6,000-8,000 inner collector trucks in container terminals with a throughput of more than 1 million containers in the mainland, with about 15,000-20,000 internal collector truck drivers.
At present, the cost of internal card drivers (including wages and social security) is about 150,000-200,000 yuan / year on average, and it is rising year by year.
Once the unmanned collection card is commercialized in the port terminal, the port operation company can greatly reduce the number of collector drivers or safety personnel, so the personnel cost can be reduced a lot every year.
(2) Labor shortage
At present, the collector card driver needs at least A2 level or above driver's license, plus the internal set card in the port area to work in the port area needs to comply with the provisions of the port area safety production, so the port area for the internal set card driver driving qualifications, driving experience will usually have higher requirements.
According to the port authorities, drivers of the collection card in the port need an A1-level driver's license, plus several years of safe driving experience, and training for at least 3 months to take up the job.
A large number of manual drivers and high-intensity, high-demand operations make there are many problems in driver management. Coupled with the instability caused by many human factors, it is difficult and costly for drivers to manage.
After the unmanned card collection technology matures, automatic driving will directly solve the recruitment problem of port enterprises to collect card drivers, solve the management problems of a large number of manual drivers, and greatly reduce management costs.
04
Project progress
Since 2017, with the development of autonomous driving technology, software and hardware, due to the characteristics of closed port scenes, low speed, and loading, capital and autonomous driving talents have begun to enter the port field to explore the possibility of port autonomous driving solutions and test operations.
Si Nian Intelligent Driving, Xijing Technology, Mainline Technology and other companies have completed the demonstration of unmanned collection cards, and have successively carried out test operations at the terminal.
At present, the role of providing port autonomous driving solutions and conducting autonomous driving testing and operation services in ports includes: autonomous driving technology companies, traditional construction machinery companies, traditional automotive electronics companies, etc. (mainly autonomous driving technology companies).
Autonomous driving technology companies: Si Nian Smart Driving, Xijing Technology, Mainline Technology, Changjia Fengxing, Feibu Technology, Muyue Intelligence, Yuanrong Qixing, Tucson Future;
Traditional construction machinery companies: Sany Offshore, Zhenhua Heavy Industry;
Automotive Electronics Company: Jingwei Hengrun;
For autonomous driving technology companies, the following patterns have been formed:
The industry generally expects that the port is one of the earliest scenarios for the commercialization of autonomous driving technology, but due to the small market space for port autonomous driving, the valuation, capital attention and financing ability of the port track autonomous driving company are slightly inferior to those of trunk logistics, Robotaxi and other tracks;
At present, the product-level port autonomous driving solutions in the entire industry are rapidly advancing, and there are large differences between companies in terms of algorithm capabilities, engineering capabilities, understanding of port scenarios and mass delivery capabilities;
Due to the background of state-owned enterprises and safety management requirements of port companies, the threshold for technology companies to enter the port for testing is high, and the port will have more stringent technical requirements and indicators, and only after meeting the requirements can it be tested and operated in the port, usually starting from 1-5 vehicles;
The number of vehicles tested or operated in the port, the operation mode, the progress of the port test operation process, and the number of test ports can characterize the maturity, stability and port recognition of the company's technical solutions to a certain extent;
The differences between the scenarios of autonomous driving are extremely large, such as mines, ports, cleaning, and terminal distribution, while the trunk logistics and Robotaxi scenarios have high requirements for technology and hardware, so it is more difficult to land.
Due to the great differences in characteristics and requirements between scenarios, it is difficult to achieve a simple migration of solutions between scenarios.
This requires autonomous driving companies to have a very deep insight and understanding of the needs of the scene side and the process of the scene; therefore, the dimensionality reduction attack from high-speed scenes to low-speed scenes is usually difficult to achieve.
Below we combine the specific situation of Si Nian Intelligent Driving to understand.
Founded in April 2020, Si Nian Intelligent Driving has gathered the earliest batch of teams in China to do port autonomous driving. The vehicle positioning/parking effect far exceeds the industry average "accuracy".
In terms of "speed", Si Nian Zhi Driving cut into "operation", and only 1 year after its establishment, it obtained commercial operation orders from ningbo and Tangshan ports, and completed 3 financings in 2 years.
The speed of financing, port signing speed and fleet size lead the industry.
In terms of long-term business model, Si Nian Intelligent Driving will add a New SaaS service model in parallel with operation.
With the dual expansion of the number of vehicles and terminals, Si Nian Zhi Driving also plans to realize the industrialization layout of inter-port logistics to off-port trunk logistics in the next few years, and realize the landing of unmanned driving in the pan-port field.
Okay, I'll stop here with that.
In this lecture, I mainly shared the content related to port autonomous driving.
I have found that port autonomous driving companies can rely on ports to achieve rapid landing, and at the same time have the potential to develop to trunk autonomous driving, with both short-term and medium- and long-term growth logic.
Finally, I would like to invite you to talk about what you think about the port autonomous driving industry?
We look forward to your sharing in the message area.
That's all for this talk, and we'll see you next.