From March 26 to 28, 2024, the 2024 China Commercial Vehicle Forum was held in Shiyan City, Hubei Province. Hosted by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, with the theme of "New Pace, New Results, New Improvement, Helping the High-quality Development of the Commercial Vehicle Industry", this forum is based on the high-quality development requirements of the industry, the realization of the national "double carbon" goal, the transformation and innovation needs of the automobile industry, and promotes reform, transformation and development with innovation, so as to help the high-quality development of the commercial vehicle industry. Huang Gang, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer and CPO of Inceptio Technology, delivered a wonderful speech at the "Theme Forum II: Empowering Intelligent Connected Technology to Accelerate the Development of the Commercial Vehicle Industry" held on the morning of March 28. The following is a transcript of the speech:
Hello everyone, it is my great pleasure to share with you on behalf of Inceptio Technology our practice of mass production, development and commercialization of heavy-duty truck intelligence.
Inceptio Technology is a technology company engaged in autonomous driving, and we are very focused on autonomous driving of trucks, and we focus on the scenario of trunk logistics. Our full-stack self-developed technology for L4 and covering L2 to L4 autonomous driving. At the same time, in terms of business model, we adhere to full-stack self-research and development, plus mass production drive - we focus on working with industry partners in the automotive industry to pre-install mass production, and then we are deeply involved in operation, through operation + R&D, we can form a closed loop of business and accelerate the faster commercialization of this technology.
Inceptio Technology has developed full-stack autonomous driving technology capabilities and collaborates with industry partners. The so-called full-stack, autonomous driving domain controller, platform software, and our full-stack algorithm, as well as the collaborative technology that extends to the autonomous driving system and the vehicle end, that is, the cooperation of the wire-controlled chassis part that Mr. Su of Dongfeng Co., Ltd. also talked about just now, and then form the ability of mass production and development.
In terms of autonomous driving technology, we have built unique technical capabilities for the special application scenarios of trucks, because trucks face new challenges for autonomous driving compared to passenger cars, including the need for us to perceive longer distances due to the delay in vehicle control. At the same time, the difference between the size and weight of trucks and passenger cars requires us to have stronger planning and control capabilities, as well as fuel-saving requirements for trucks, so we have our unique core technical capabilities in terms of stronger perception capabilities, integrated algorithms for regulation and control, and fuel-saving technologies.
The company was established in 2018, and in 2019, we began to jointly develop intelligent heavy-duty trucks for autonomous driving with industrial partners, and after three years, in 2022, we achieved mass production of four products jointly developed by Dongfeng and Sinotruk, China's leading commercial vehicle OEMs, on two heavy-duty truck platforms, and put them on the market. We have also summarized the "White Paper on Mass Production of Autonomous Trucks" based on our mass production practices to share and jointly explore the mass production methodology of autonomous driving technology with the industry. On this basis, we continue to improve our technology and mass production capabilities, and in 2023, our product technology has been upgraded to the second generation, that is, Inceptio's second-generation autonomous driving system. Based on the second-generation system, we have also carried out front-end mass production cooperation with more OEMs, and more models have been launched on the market this year. We are very grateful to our industry partners in the heavy-duty truck industry for joining us to explore the mass production of autonomous driving.
After the mass production of our products, that is, after 2022, we spent another two years on commercial operation and promotion. So far, nearly 1,000 of our vehicles have been put on the market and have been safely operated for more than 90 million kilometers until March. In order to realize the commercial implementation of autonomous driving, Inceptio has also built a special business model, that is, we have built our own capacity network of self-driving trucks, and through our transportation capacity network, we hold vehicles to provide transportation capacity services for customers in the express delivery industry, which is precisely because of this method, so that our products can have a rapid technical iteration from 0 to 1, and the verification of the commercial value of our products has been recognized by customers.
Let me share with you what kind of business value our 90 million kilometers have proven. We summarize it as "one security and three provinces", "one security" is safety, and "three provinces" is to save people, labor and fuel.
The first is security. Our 90 million kilometers of operation is mainly in the express express operation line, these vehicles through the empirical data show that the autonomous vehicle is safer than the manual operation, through our vehicle standard double warning (front collision warning, lane departure warning) this function to collect data, compared with manual driving, under the same conditions, intelligent driving 1,000 kilometers of collision warning times than human drivers driving 70%, lane offset, including left and right deviation, reduced by 73%. In addition, we have cooperated with Pacific Insurance Company, and after more than 1 full claim year, it has been proved that the safety of our intelligent driving vehicles is actually significantly improved compared to ordinary heavy trucks. As you know, the premium of heavy trucks is very high, and the insurance cost of a heavy truck is about more than 20,000 yuan, and insurance companies are reluctant to underwrite it, because 96% will be paid back. The loss rate of our intelligent driving heavy trucks is only 18% in the claim cycle, and the 18% of the compensation occurs in non-autonomous driving conditions, such as some small scratches in the distribution center or after getting off the highway. This is the value that comes to customers from a security perspective.
The second is labor-saving. Together with the team of aerospace human factors engineering experts from Beijing Institute of Technology, we conducted research and testing on the fatigue of autonomous driving drivers, constructed an index system of physiological fatigue and psychological fatigue, and finally proved that physiological fatigue decreased by 1/3 and fatigue by more than 34% by detecting signals such as electromyography and electrocardiogram. At the same time, psychological fatigue can also be reduced by more than 10%.
It is precisely because it can save worry and effort, so it can support our third customer value, which is to save people. We operate these vehicles, mainly in the range of about 1000 kilometers, to serve express customers, these large fleets are more concerned about safety, more than 500 kilometers of transportation distance are arranged for a car two drivers to take turns. For example, 900 kilometers from Shanghai to Jinan, the timeliness requirement is 13 hours, and one driver can safely complete the driving task, and there is enough rest time to start the next waybill task, so in such a scenario, after two years, we have proved that the single-driving operation is safe, healthy and sustainable.
Not only the 1,000-kilometer transportation distance, the customer is more creative, originally we did not promote the longer mileage, but some customers put our vehicles, within the range of 2000 kilometers to try to save people to explore. This is a very interesting case, one of our customers, that is, from Hangzhou to Yinchuan is 2000 kilometers, in the middle of the Shanxi Yuncheng designed a middle rest point, after the first drive, can have a rest of about 8 hours, and then continue to operate, so as to ensure the safe completion of the transportation task. So the provincial people we just talked about have been confirmed in the scenario of express delivery and 1,000 kilometers of transportation distance, and other customers are also trying.
We also see that the application of intelligent driving will also be extended to the scenario of single driving, for example, for individual transportation, due to the fact that the logistics industry has been very volatile in recent years, the freight is very low, even if it is thousands of kilometers away, it is already a single driving, in this case, autonomous vehicles can make them safer.
The last point is the value of fuel saving, through global speed planning, PCC predictive cruise, engine and transmission control, and collaborative development with OEMs, we can reduce the fuel consumption level of the fleet by 3% to 7% through intelligent driving, which can bring value to customers.
We also work with customers in the express delivery industry to calculate TCO, intelligent driving heavy trucks can reduce their cost per kilometer by 2 to 3 cents, and the return on investment cycle is about a year and a half, and some are lower. Because of this, our express customers accepted the capacity service we gave them in the early days, and now they have begun to purchase and operate smart heavy trucks on a large scale. We have large-scale customer delivery cases with Dongfeng and Sinotruk, and more customers in the express delivery industry will adopt intelligent heavy truck vehicles this year, so we will accelerate such a process. Of course, we are now working with our OEM partners to promote to other scenarios, such as LTL and vehicle industry customers, and we believe that this process will also be accelerated.
We've just talked about some of our latest developments, and of course, we at Inceptio are constantly iterating and upgrading our technology. On the one hand, on the current product platform, the adaptation of our products to vehicle OEMs is more efficient, the customer experience is better, and it is safer. On the other hand, we are pre-researching next-generation technologies, including end-to-end networks with safety guardrails, to create Inceptio's super-intelligent drivers.
Finally, let's make an outlook.
Intelligent driving technology, like any new technology, follows an innovation diffusion curve in its commercialization process. Through the innovation of business model and the practice of commercial operation in subdivided scenarios such as express delivery, Inceptio has made intelligent driving of heavy trucks gain early adopters. Now that the industry is entering the early stage of the public, there are three factors that will accelerate this process: one is the common pain points in the logistics industry, safety, cost, The second is the technical radiation effect of intelligent driving, one is the word-of-mouth communication of customers in the early express delivery industry, and the speed of intelligent development of passenger cars will also have a radiation effect on our commercial vehicles; third, the attractiveness of intelligent heavy truck products will continue to improve, that is, we talk about cost performance, on the one hand, the performance of the product will continue to iterate, and constantly improve, on the other hand, the cost of the vehicle equipped with the automatic driving system that customers are currently particularly concerned about, including the wire control chassis and the automatic driving system itself, the cost of the difference between the basic car of the non-intelligent heavy truck, will decline rapidly。 There are two driving factors for this rapid decline, one is the automatic driving system and the chassis system by wire, due to the scale and Moore effect will bring about a rapid cost reduction, and the configuration of the base car is improved, such as the popularization of AMT, as well as the regulatory requirements for active safety, the tractor will be equipped with double warning and AEB as standard, which will narrow the price gap between the base car and the intelligent heavy truck.
Therefore, we believe that intelligent driving and intelligent driving of heavy trucks will penetrate the mainstream market faster and faster, and we are willing to work together with industry partners to accelerate the arrival of this process, thank you.
(Note: This article is based on on-site shorthand and has not been reviewed by the speaker)
Source: China Commercial Vehicle Forum
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