How can unmanned mining cards achieve commercial "breakthrough" under the path division?

In recent years, with the entry of Internet giants, OEMs and parts manufacturers, chip companies, and start-ups, the autonomous driving track has begun to rebound against the trend, and has become a "top-class" existence in the eyes of capital from time to time.

One reason why the track has regained the favor of capital seems to point to the fact that since last year, the industry has gradually made commercialization attempts, or has been able to run through commercialization on a large scale.

Clearing the fog, in fact, the most important thing is the ability to commercialize.As autonomous driving progresses to version 2.0, the "breakthrough" of commercialization has obviously become the most important indicator to consider.

Many players in the industry have already tried to meet the demands of "landing" today. What will be the difference in this new stage of development?Which forces will be able to take the lead in realizing the "breakthrough" of commercialization in the industry?

Business has different paths, but "commercialization" is the same river that will eventually flow into it

When new technologies appear, an unavoidable appeal is often the “landing” of commercialization, and this is probably the case with autonomous driving.In the years from the high point to the low point, perhaps it is precisely because of the contradiction between the huge investment and the still far profit that its "bubble" in the capital market has gradually been punctured a lot.

However, in the past two years, the situation on the track has been gradually reversed.First, at the national level, a series of relevant support policies for autonomous driving technology have been successively introduced from the perspectives of digital economy and smart cities.

At the beginning of March 2021, the State Council issued the "National Comprehensive Three-dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline", proposing the goal of building a modern and high-quality national comprehensive three-dimensional transportation network.In addition, in the same year, the country also successively released the " Management Specification for Road Test and Demonstration Application ofIntelligent ConnectedVehicles (Trial)" and the "Three-Year Action Plan for New Infrastructure Construction of the Internet of Things (2021-2023)" and other autonomous driving. Industry-related favorable policies.

After all, the recovery of the capital market is often inseparable from the support of policies for the industry, and under the guidance of the demands of technology landing, companies from all walks of life retool and move forward based on policies, which is the superstructure of the foundation.

Today, the autonomous driving track actually has a trend of developing in a more diverse and divergent direction. Based on the technical background, from making cars in the sea, to chips, lidar and other hardware in the supply chain, to ADAS algorithms, high-level autonomous driving Wait, there are already a hundred flowers blooming, and many unicorns and quasi-unicorns have appeared.

So what are their different ways?Let's take a closer look.

The first is the OEM, the camp closest to mass production. We can see the success of Tesla. Its advantage is that it can achieve the ultimate compatibility between phased technology and mass production, but on the other hand, the current transition from new forces to traditional For car companies, and even the influx of cross-border car manufacturers, the competition in the industry has gradually intensified, and the risks should not be underestimated.

The second is hardware supply chain companies. The good side is that after the emergence of new technologies, there are objective gaps in the supply chain, but the old giants that have existed for a long time in the industry will not easily let go, and it is like making chips and starting from scratch. R & D cycle Also tends to be longer.

Finally, there is the field of software technology. Compared with the OEM and the hardware supply chain track, a distinctive feature is that players have obvious differences in the choice of scenes, such as Robotaxi, Robotruck, and ADAS mass production, etc., in each scene There will be different players doing deep plowing.

But this is still not the whole picture of the track. In the course of many years of development, the business layout seems to be somewhat large and scattered, such as Xidi Zhijia: Robotruck, smart park, unmanned mining card, Smart bus, and then to a series of vehicle-road coordination solutions such as intelligent networked on-board equipment OBU, intelligent networked roadside equipment RSU, and intelligent networked urban road management system.

Although these companies related to driverless technology are gradually moving towards different paths in their business lines, commercialization is the same river that everyone will eventually merge into.On the way of subverting the tradition with technology, capturing the most accessible market demand often means being able to embark on the wave of commercialization earlier.

The unmanned mining card generated tens of millions of revenue, and the C round of financing 300 million yuan tied the track record

However, over the years of development, although the unmanned driving technology has been "made from scratch", due to the constraints of policies, laws and other rules in China, it is difficult to commercialize it in an open environment.Then, the closed scene has become the best "caliber" for capital and enterprises to land in the field of unmanned driving.

This also makes driverless minecarts a "new hope" for capital.First of all, the remote and almost closed environment of the mining area is a good landing scene; secondly, due to the harsh environment of the mining area, it is not a priority for the new generation of workers, and the difficulty in recruiting makes there a great demand for unmanned technology.

Moreover, there are already many scenarios landing in the industry.

For example, the unmanned mining trucks of Xidi Zhijia have achieved more than one year of transportation in the Jiangsu Jurong Tai Cement Cement Mine and the Gansu Jinchuan Second Mine Metal Mine with annualproduction capacityof 5 million tons and 4 million tons respectively. The cumulative operation has exceeded 20,000 kilometers, and the mine transportation totaled 125,000 tons.In 2021, the cumulative contract value of the Xidi smart driving product project has reached 240 million yuan.

In addition, in April 2022, Taiwan Cement officially signed a purchase agreement with Xidi Zhijia for 14 pure electric unmanned vehicles. This is the largest unmanned batch purchase in the field of building materials and mining in China, and it is also the industry's first full-scale unmanned driving. The unmanned mine project, which is delivered in September this year, will become the industry's largest unmanned driving benchmark project in the whole country.

The commercialization results are improving, and the capital market has also given it a lot of feedback.In 2021, when the industry is rekindled, Xidi Zhijia has won a total of 4 rounds of financing, with an average of new financing injections every quarter, of which the B rounds and B+ rounds of financing total 700 million yuan.In addition, on May 6 this year, Xidi Zhijia completed the C round of financing of 300 million yuan, led by Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group, followed by China Emerging Assets, and old shareholders such as Ruishi Fund and Gandao Fund.

It can be seen that under the established commercialization-oriented strategy, Xidi Zhijia has objectively achieved considerable results in terms of project progress and financing.

So what is the competitiveness of Xidi Zhijia?In other words, for the capital market and its customers, why are they paying for it?Through the specific situation of Xidi Zhijia, it may also help us have a more intuitive understanding of the trend of the new stage of the industry.

The first is the insight into market demand. Although the business layout of Xidi Zhijia is relatively extensive, it is not difficult to find that there is a through-line main line, which is to focus on the commercial vehicle market.In the face of numerous scenarios for autonomous driving technology, is the customer’s current demand for improvement or just need?In fact, it will affect its willingness to commercialize to a certain extent.

The commercial vehicle market is different from passenger vehicles. Taking mining scenarios as an example, once casualties occur, production will be stopped for rectification, and mining qualifications will be canceled in severe cases. Moreover, due to objective factors such as harsh operating environment and high safety risks, the aging of operators The problem leads to a shortage of manpower, and this trend may further expand in the future. Therefore, the demand and motivation for unmanned transformation is actually more urgent than that of passenger cars to a certain extent.

The second is scene dimensionality reduction, to avoid the problems of right of way and traffic regulations in mainstream scenes at this stage.Compared with the scene businesses such as robotaxi and robotruck that require the right of way, the minecart operates in a closed scene, so it is not restricted by traffic regulations, which makes it almost no buffer zone between the test and the landing, which is conducive to more Land soon.

Finally, it is the technical foundation.If insight into demand and scene dimensionality reduction is to maximize access to water sources, then technology is the ultimate decisive tool for water extraction.

For example, in terms of unmanned mining truck technology, Xidi Zhijia already has a complete set of hardware and software system solution integration packages, ranging from 3-5cm high-precision positioning algorithms, to remote driving control, intelligent decision-making planning, and vehicle-road coordination. System, through the reconstruction of the vehicle-level underlying software, Xidi Zhijia has been able to use technology to escort unmanned mining operations.

Implemented in actual scenarios, its unmanned mining trucks can currently realize automatic queuing for ore loading/unloading, perception of remote small obstacles, dust filtering perception, dynamic planning of open space on mining platforms, automatic identification of explosive heap boundaries, and underground loading. Unmanned operation of the whole process of mining, unloading, and transportation, SLAM mapping and positioning of underground roadways, remote emergency takeover and other full-link unmanned operation capabilities.

Perhaps it is under the extension of the three-layer strategy of insight into market demand, discovery of high-quality scenarios in stages, and use of technology to finally absorb water sources, that Xidi Zhijia has been able to continuously obtain commercial orders in recent years, and has been recognized by the capital market. .

end

In the years when the hot money for autonomous driving was surging, technology has always been regarded as the "Bible" of the industry, but looking back today, it is not difficult to find that we seemed to be too optimistic about the future.

After all, in order to achieve true unmanned driving, it is not only technical issues that need to be solved, but also a series of complex ethical and regulatory issues behind the technology, which also require huge time costs to digest.

Therefore, from the progress of Xidi Zhijia today, we seem to be able to see that for the former industry unicorns, today it is necessary to get rid of the inertia of still purely technical climbing to a certain extent.Whether it is technical dimensionality reduction or scene dimensionality reduction, only by creating commercial value in stages and constantly maintaining our competitiveness while climbing the peak, we can better let technology and time compete.

For the emerging unicorn companies in the past two years, the same is true if they want to challenge their predecessors. While catching up at the technical level, commercialization has become a new topic that they cannot avoid, which will increasingly become the focus of today's market. Top priority.