In the past two years, one of the hottest concepts in the capital market is "car building".
Tesla's annual growth rate in 2021 exceeds 700%, and the three major domestic "new car-making forces" have gained a firm foothold in the market; traditional automakers such as BYD and Wuling Hongguang have increased their deployment of new technologies such as "new energy" and "autonomous driving"; Leading companies such as Jidu, Skyworth, Xiaomi, and Huawei took this opportunity to start cross-border.
No one wants a piece of the billion-dollar pie of self-driving cars.
In the new round of car-making boom, intelligent driving has also become a hot word without a doubt. Both the industry and the investment community favor intelligent driving. According to data from Tianyancha, as of 2021, there will be more than 5,000 companies in my country whose business scope includes "autonomous driving, intelligent driving, and unmanned driving".
Recently, Tuorian, a commercial vehicle intelligent driving company, announced the completion of the B-round financing of over 1.3 billion yuan. This round of financing was strategically led by Ping An Capital, and SK China, a shareholder of Sutorian's A round, continued to invest additionally. It is worth mentioning that after the completion of this round of financing, the valuation of Sotorian will be close to 10 billion, and it will sprint to the unicorn sequence in the industry with the help of commercial vehicle intelligent driving technology.
With the increasing investment enthusiasm for intelligent driving in the capital market, according to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of this year, there have been more than 60 investment and financing events in the autonomous driving industry, with an investment and financing amount exceeding 70 billion yuan. Among so many companies, why is Sotorian able to be favored by so many capital stars?
Dig deep into the "gold mine" behind insurance
Founded in 2014, Sotorian did not go well at first. The price of the company's smart anti-collision products is as high as more than 10,000 yuan, and this price is generally unaffordable for logistics companies or truck drivers. "High cost" has become an obstacle to the large-scale commercialization of the company's products.
In order to solve this problem, Soto Ryan decided to start from the commercial vehicle insurance market. There are 24 million commercial vehicles in China, and there will be a year-on-year growth of 8% to 10% in the future. Based on the average premium of 20,000 yuan per vehicle, it will be 300 billion a year.
The scale of 300 billion is a big piece of cake for insurance companies, but according to the data from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission in 2021, the insurance compensation rate of this industry is as high as 120-130%. Under this predicament, if the insurance company wants to get this cake, it has to find ways to reduce the insurance payout ratio.
Sotorian focused on this path, communicated with large domestic insurance companies and logistics companies, and tested his own products against market doubts. After a few months of small trials, the accident rate decreased by 44.6%, and the compensation for a single accident decreased by 47.9%. Logistics companies can also use this system to improve the management efficiency of fleets and drivers.
This is the business model of Suo Tuo Rui'an: take the lead in entering the market through the active safety of commercial vehicles, and use technology to empower the innovative business model of insurance to help logistics companies reduce costs and increase efficiency, and reduce insurance compensation, and provide benefits for upstream and downstream enterprises and the industry ecology The chain creates business value.
At present, it has been deeply involved in the active safety field of commercial vehicles for 8 years. Sotorian has a lot of products. From the research and development of radar FCW early warning products in 2014, to the research and development of anti-collision systems with intelligent deceleration functions in 2015, and to the first commercial electronic AEB control in 2016 Sotorian has extended its business to almost every field of intelligent driving.
Take Sotoria's AEBS automatic emergency braking product as an example, which includes LDW lane departure warning, FCW forward collision warning, AEB automatic emergency braking and other functions. Under the premise of not changing the original vehicle braking system, the device can support dual-channel parallel braking, taking into account the longitudinal braking control of the driver and the automation system, and performs adaptive intelligent braking according to the load, vehicle distance, weather, and road environment. move strategy.
In terms of intelligent driving product matrix, Sotorian has deployed ADAS advanced assisted driving, EBS electronic control system, EHPS electro-hydraulic power steering system, and vector-by-wire chassis and other fields.
Under the premise of not breaking the original "cake" of various stakeholders, Suo Tuo Rui'an has combined hardware and software to form a three-dimensional solution of "vehicle-cloud-human" and a data product and service model based on cloud algorithm strategy. Create your own business closed loop.
Today's smart driving track is like a game of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds". For Suo Tuorian, being able to break through the cruel competition system and obtain huge financing proves that its potential has been recognized and accepted by the capital market and the public.
However, as more and more new entrants participate in it, the competition on the entire track is also intensifying. Facing the upcoming schedule, is Sotorian ready?
Challenges and opportunities in the 100 billion market
Since 2021, there has been an endless stream of news on the theme of "cars": from the new energy vehicles that traditional car companies and technology companies are competing to enter the game, to the car companies offering suggestions for the development of on-board chips at the two sessions, to the demand for carbon neutrality. The accelerated landing of intelligent driving.
The support of current policies such as new infrastructure and carbon neutrality has made intelligent driving an important path for urban informatization construction and urban carbon reduction. The intensified demand for industrial upgrading and transformation in cities has also led to a rapid rise in intelligent driving.
According to the data forecast of China Industry Information Network, the market size of China's intelligent driving industry will exceed 170 billion yuan in 2020, and will reach 238.1 billion yuan by 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20.62%. The huge commercial value contained in it has attracted countless automobile technology companies. Influx.
On the track of intelligent driving, commercial vehicles are more like low-hanging fruits. The application scenarios of autonomous driving for commercial vehicles mainly include seven areas: mainline logistics, port scenarios, logistics parks, mining areas, airport scenarios, terminal distribution, and unmanned cleaning.
Among them, trunk logistics and port logistics are the two main scenarios. The former has a trillion-level market volume, and the latter, as a low-speed closed scenario, is expected to be the first to be commercialized.
Under the lure of huge market space and ideal landing scenarios, the field of commercial vehicles has gradually gathered many smart driving players. Some of them operate light assets and only provide technical solutions, while others spend a lot of money on both technology and fleets. Technology and operation are carried out with both hands; from another dimension, among various enterprises, some choose a gradual assisted driving technology route, and some insist on leapfrogging L4 technology.
- Inceptio Technology showcased two new self-driving mass-produced heavy trucks jointly developed with Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle and Sinotruk in July 2021. Both vehicles are equipped with Inceptio's full-stack self-developed self-driving system "Inceptio Xuanyuan" ", and plans to roll off the production line at the end of the year;
- Zhijia Technology chooses to provide diversified solutions for truck autonomous driving based on the two modes of existing mass-produced vehicles + post-modification. The car-level mass-produced high-level self-driving truck jointly developed with FAW Jiefang will also be put on the market in 2021;
- Platforms such as Suning and JD.com have launched L4 unmanned delivery vehicles and have realized operation.
At present, although the intelligent driving technology has been further developed with the influx of many companies, there are still many areas that need to be "sophisticated" for large-scale application of intelligent driving.
It is well known in the industry that smart driving burns money. Take TuSimple Future, the world's first autonomous driving stock, as an example. Its prospectus and financial report show that from 2018 to the first half of this year, Tucson's future revenue will be about 32.5 million yuan, while the net loss will be nearly 5 billion yuan; among them, R&D expenditure will be about 2.25 billion yuan.
In addition to the huge R&D team expenditure, the equipment cost should not be underestimated. For example, Baidu’s Robotaxi fleet exceeds 500 vehicles (not counting its self-driving minibuses and minibuses), nearly 3,000 patents related to intelligent driving, and more than 200 test licenses. These achievements are the best in China .
According to media estimates, its total investment in autonomous driving over the past eight years may be around 100 billion yuan. Li Yanhong mentioned in an interview that in 2020 alone, Baidu will invest as much as 20 billion yuan in autonomous driving.
The implementation of large-scale intelligent driving also tests the economic capacity of a company. Coupled with the later operating investment, companies with insufficient profitability may not be able to afford such costs.
In addition, safety is also a big obstacle on the intelligent driving track.
Looking at the entire industry, the technology is not mature enough and safe enough. Even if the driver does not need to drive the vehicle, the safety officer is still sitting in the driver's seat, and laws and regulations are unlikely to release authority in the short term.
To achieve unmanned operation, in order to ensure the safety of the vehicle, higher requirements are also put forward for technologies such as lidar, camera, algorithm, and software. To a certain extent, this is also a cumulative process, which cannot be achieved in a short period of time.
As far as the client is concerned, what smart driving should solve now is how to make it accepted by the public. Although it has been proved by a large number of experiments and data, for the public's psychology and traditional concepts, there will still be doubts about its safety and reliability in essence, which will also have a certain impact on the landing and popularization of intelligent driving. Influence.
What is certain is that the commercialization of intelligent driving is the general trend, which is the main reason why it can be chased by capital and enterprises. However, there are still certain difficulties in achieving large-scale popularization under the condition that the relevant technologies and the environment are not yet mature.
In the future, in 2022, intelligent driving will become an extremely important supplementary member in the new industrial field, motivating players to run with all their strength. The intensified industry competition and rising technical threshold will also trigger new "challenges". Despite the gathering of strong players, Sotorian has verified to some extent that in the process of a new industry that is fraught with crises, every time it responds to changes, it is also a process of constantly building higher barriers.
Article source: New Industry Insights