In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the economic level and the degree of opening to the outside world, my country's ports have ushered in vigorous development and have become an important and influential water transport country in the world.
According to data from the Ministry of Communications, as of July 2021, my country's ports have completed a cumulative cargo throughput of 8.9 billion tons, an increase of 11.3% year-on-year; the country's ports have completed a cumulative container throughput of 161.89 million TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 12.4%, ranking first in the world.
In the context of rising throughput, high labor costs, high transportation costs, and increased efficiency, major ports urgently need to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and the emergence of self-driving commercial vehicles has helped solve this problem.
Recently, Xijing Technology, an artificial intelligence enterprise focusing on commercial applications of unmanned driving in ports, has obtained a new round of financing and announced the mass production of the world's first intelligent battery-swapping unmanned commercial vehicle Q-Truck.
In fact, according to the data from Tianyancha, Xijing Technology has obtained 11 rounds of financing investors, including Hegao Capital, Shenzhen Investment Holding United, COSCO Group, Essence Securities, Fosun Group and other institutions. Why is Xijing Technology, as a company established only 6 years ago, won the favor of investors?
In addition, the founder Tan Limin said in an interview that in 2022, Xijing Technology plans to simultaneously start the unmanned driving battery swap business in four countries around the world, and revealed that overseas will become the main market this year, but the overseas competitors are also not. Quite a few, how much imagination will Xijing Technology have?
Key words: Cargo and Passenger, Commercial Power Swap
In daily life, when we talk about the topic of autonomous driving, we first think of more about the autonomous driving vehicles that many domestic and foreign car companies are deploying. In fact, in the field of commercial vehicles on the other side of the automotive industry, the commercialization of autonomous driving is more advanced than passenger vehicles.
It is easier to realize the application of unmanned commercial vehicles in fixed scenarios. With the continuous development of new scenarios such as trunk transportation, ports, mines, short-distance unmanned distribution, and urban and park sanitation, the expansion space of new markets will attract Many companies entered the game.
One is that e-commerce and express delivery companies such as Cainiao, JD Logistics, YTO, Suning, and Zhongtong have begun to deploy unmanned logistics to intervene in the field of unmanned commercial vehicles, mainly focusing on terminal distribution. For example, Cainiao launched a delivery robot named XiaoG in 2016, and JD.com’s first batch of unmanned delivery vehicles piloted on June 18 in 2017 delivered express delivery at Renmin University of China.
The other category includes traditional commercial vehicle manufacturers such as FAW Jiefang, Sinotruk, Dongfeng Motor, Foton Motor, and SAIC Maxus.
· In September 2016, Sinotruk released the I-generation smart truck, and completed the first batch of delivery and put it into market operation at the end of 2017, becoming the first domestic enterprise to realize mass production of smart heavy trucks;
· On November 14, 2016, Foton released the first self-driving super truck in Shanghai, which was jointly developed by Foton and Baidu. Baidu provided Foton with high-precision maps and data;
· In April 2017, China FAW announced the "Zhitu" commercial vehicle strategic plan, and completed the first real vehicle demonstration of intelligent driving in China. In October of the same year, FAW Jiefang completed the first road test of L3 intelligent vehicles on expressways in China;
On the eve of the 2018 Beijing Auto Show, Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. held a display and demonstration of electrified and intelligent networked trucks at the Wuhan Technology R&D Center, including two L4 level unmanned Dongfeng Tianlong heavy trucks.
Although there are many old companies in the front, it also attracts many start-up companies such as Xijing Technology to enter the game halfway.
In fact, Xijing Technology is not a "native self-driving company" . At the beginning of its establishment in 2015, founder Li Min said that by chance, he discovered the technical characteristics and application potential of the AI industry, embarked on the road of entrepreneurship, and determined that the core business is AI chips. One year after its establishment, Xijing Technology launched its self-developed smart port system WellOcean, which replaces manual efforts to perform more efficient visual recognition of key factors such as container numbers and container types, helping tally to reduce labor costs.
After gradually clarifying the direction of the application of autonomous driving in ports , Xijing Technology established an independent autonomous driving team at the end of 2016 . Scenarios require rapid iteration.
In 2018, the company released the unmanned driving brand Qomolo, and at the same time launched the full-time unmanned commercial vehicle Q-Truck. In actual operation, it helped Thai users to become the world's first terminal with mixed operation of driverless and manual driving. The average efficiency of continuous operation reached 28 MOVE/hour, which surpassed the efficiency of manual operation, and it has been completely handed over to users for their own operation.
After that, it further aimed at the dual needs of cargo and people. In November 2021, Qomolo One, an unmanned heavy-duty mobile platform for "cargo and passenger", was released, continuing the Q-Truck's concept of completely "removing the cab" . The fast slide-type changeover of the loading compartment on the vehicle realizes the customization of user scenarios, and can provide a variety of uses according to user needs. In the future, it can be applied to unmanned operation scenarios under various special needs such as special fire protection, ore transportation, and mobile offices.
At present, Xijing Technology has cooperated with many ports at home and abroad to promote the application of unmanned commercial vehicles, and Xijing Technology has put its own products and services into operation in more than 80 ports and logistics parks around the world.
In the past two years, with the introduction of the national "carbon neutrality" goal, many car companies have transformed to the direction of new energy sources, and entered the battery swap market, deploying swap stations and piles. Nowadays, in addition to the two-wheeled electric vehicles and cars that we know have started the replacement charging model, the development of commercial battery replacement business has also started in the field of autonomous driving.
Beginning in 2021, Xijing Technology began to explore the commercialization of solid-state batteries in the field of driverless commercial vehicles, and cooperated with clean energy and cogeneration project development and operation companies GCL Nengke and other companies. The latest E-Truck, an unmanned connected car, can be updated within five or six minutes. Now another smart battery replacement Q-Truck has also been mass-produced due to market demand, because in the port scene, it is a working self-driving car, rather than simply being satisfied with driving from point a to point b.
In general, Xijing Technology has told investors a good development story with its own potential. Tan Limin, the founder of Xijing Technology, once said that in 2022, Xijing Technology will simultaneously start the unmanned driving battery swap business in four countries around the world, which also means that Xijing Technology will start its global business process. How big is Xijing Technology's imagination to make efforts overseas?
Overseas market, where is Xijing Technology confident?
Since ancient times, due to the vast sea area, many countries have developed sea transportation, and sea transportation has become the main mode of foreign trade for most countries. Today, with the increasingly perfect port construction, the volume of imported and exported goods continues to hit new highs.
The volume of containers at major ports in Europe and the United States will reach new highs in 2021. On December 22, the Port of Rotterdam announced that the 15 millionth TEU arrived at the Port of Rotterdam this year. This is the first time that a European port has exceeded 15 million TEUs. Singapore's Minister of Transport also announced that Singapore's container throughput in 2021 will hit a record high of 37.5 million TEUs, an increase of 1.63% over 2020; freight volume will increase by 1.4% to 599 million tons.
However, whether it is at home or abroad, it can be found that the port transportation efficiency is difficult to form a direct ratio with the rapid increase in the volume of goods, and a higher demand for operational efficiency is put forward.
This is also an opportunity for Xijing Technology to increase overseas.
Previously, Xijing Technology and Thailand's Kee Port jointly built an AI unmanned truck and human-driven truck mixed automated terminal project that has been fully put into operation. Unlike other terminals, Xijing Technology has realized manual driving and Q- Truck The collection truck fleet travels freely in the same place at the same time. And achieved good results . Since April 2020, more than 23243TEU containers have been safely operated in Terminal D of Laem Chabang, Thailand at Hutchison Port.
(Source: China Net Science)
In addition, the self-developed full-time unmanned electric heavy truck Q-Truck and the cooperatively developed unmanned straddle carrier have landed in Sweden's CTN terminal, COSCO Shipping's Abu Dhabi Khalifa Phase II terminal and Xinjiang International Land Port. , the past can be copied and further improved in the process of internationalization.
The power exchange business to be implemented has already accumulated to a certain extent on the basis of the previous cooperative ports, which is conducive to the implementation in the early stage. According to the vision of the founder Tan Limin, once there is a power station and a transit yard, the operation range of new energy heavy trucks can gradually expand from the original closed scene to the application of farther scenes. In the future, the scene can be expanded to 200 kilometers, and then gradually expanded. To and 400 or even 600 kilometers, providing more efficient transportation and boosting the development of smart ports.
In Malaysia, Mexico and other places where the business is about to land, shipping is also very developed. And the two are important maritime transportation hubs in Southeast Asia and the American Pacific/Atlantic region respectively. Malaysia's Port Klang is located in the middle of the Strait of Malacca, connecting the main ports of Penang and Singapore, and the Mexican port serves the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of the Americas. The river basin has natural geographical advantages, and Xijing Technology can further explore cooperation with other neighboring ports in its cooperation with them.
However, now it has become the norm to speed up going to sea, and many unmanned commercial vehicle companies are speeding up their deployment overseas. In the same field, Sany Offshore has already deployed in ports in Saudi Arabia and India since 2016, and its main line of technology Signed a contract with China National Machine Corporation to jointly develop autonomous driving products in countries along the "Belt and Road" and overseas markets in Europe and America, Foton Zhilan's layout in Southeast Asia, etc. When players compete in the same direction, it is an opportunity and a challenge.
Source of this article: New Industry Insights