Chairman of Lion Bridge Wan Hao, General Manager of Baidu Smart Driving Group Li Zhenyu (fourth from left)
The production version of the self-driving minibus Apolon has created a fever for Baidu, and the company has laid aside in the field of trunk logistics.
On July 11th, Baidu United Sunshine Convergence Capital invested RMB 1 billion in the Lion Bridge Group. Lion Bridge will also join Baidu's unmanned open source platform Apollo.
The above-mentioned three parties will jointly establish an independent company with partners such as OEMs to develop self-driving trucks. According to Titanium Media, the team hopes to achieve the SAE Level 3 autopilot truck landing within 2 years, which will be 2 to 3 cars per car. The driver is replaced by a driver; automatic driving above Level 4 is achieved within 3-4 years.
In the scene of autonomous driving, Baidu has invested in three companies.
In April 2018, Baidu, Shunwei and other investors led the A1 round of financing, locking in the low-speed operation of the city. In November 2017, Baidu invested in 700 million B+ round of financing, seeking urban self-driving. The landing channel of operation. This alliance with Lions Bridge means that Baidu has locked the track of automatic driving trunk logistics.
Li Zhenyu, vice president of Baidu, the general manager of the intelligent driving business group, said that the choice of Lion Bridge is because the company itself has a good technical background, and already has a systematic Internet technology to serve business such as credit reporting and vehicle deployment.
'Shiqiao has industry-leading informatization and data capabilities, and is expected to take the lead in commercial vehicle autopilot.'
In the logistics industry where there are not many players, Lion Bridge itself has been deployed on the full service chain of commercial vehicles such as finance, logistics, and transportation. This also provides opportunities for Baidu's artificial intelligence, car networking and other technologies.
Invisible giants in the trillion-dollar logistics market
According to the data, Shiqiao Group was established in April 2012. It is a commercial vehicle finance and service platform. The company's goal is to enhance the multi-scenario value of commercial vehicles in full cycle and build a smart vehicle service platform for commercial vehicles.
According to Wan Xi, chairman of Shiqiao, the usage scenarios of commercial vehicles and passenger cars are very different. The use scenes of passenger cars are generally simple, and the situation of commercial vehicles is completely different. Not only is the cost of the vehicles themselves high, The cost of use is high. 'According to the annual operating income of 1 million trucks, the annual oil, road, and insurance can basically account for about 40%, there will be about 400,000, so this is a very large production material. Consumer demand. '
'In the field of logistics, basically few people own their own vehicles. Almost all commercial vehicles use a variety of financial instruments to complete transactions. It is hard to imagine that one person will spend $200,000 to buy a truck. Operation. 'Wan Wan said, 'This provides a good opportunity for our financial leasing, automotive after-service market.'
After 6 years of development, based on the new operation, micro finance, and large capacity business model, Lion Bridge has established four service systems: service driver and owner, service commercial vehicle dealer, service financial institution, and service logistics company owner.
In terms of operations, as a platform, Lion Bridge has now gathered more than 100,000 commercial vehicle drivers and individual owners, more than 6,000 commercial vehicle dealers and more than 14,000 transportation companies.
In the commercial vehicle aftermarket, Lionsbridge provides services for drivers and transportation companies, ETC/fuel collection, insurance collection and other comprehensive services. Meanwhile, the relevant person in charge of Shiqiao revealed that the company is building and upgrading commercial vehicle dealers and transportation companies. Capable SaaS products, and provide vehicle inspection, auction auctions and financial support for full-transaction processes for used car buyers, sellers, and dealers.
In terms of retail microfinance, Shiqiao said that the company has issued 12 issues in the open market, nearly 13 billion yuan in ABS/ABN, and the asset size at the end of 2018 is expected to exceed 20 billion yuan. And through cooperation with Sunshine Insurance, Lion Bridge also It will optimize its risk control system based on industry characteristics and big data to improve asset quality.
According to Wan Hao, this auto-driving truck cooperated with Baidu, which is mainly used for trunk logistics transportation. The first L3-class automatic driving was launched within 2 years. The self-driving truck needs to rely on manual driving in addition to high speed. After the high speed, it will enter the automatic driving mode. This conversion will be completed in a highway port.
Because the policy is not clear enough for autopilot transportation in high-speed scenes, Lion Bridge said that it will not mass-produce and invest in autonomous vehicles in the early stage, but will open the data to the regulatory authorities for approval and verification through small-scale operations to obtain policies. open.
'I think that driving is unmanned. Intelligent driving is something that China can develop together with other Western developed economies. With the wisdom and vision of the Chinese government, we should be able to get government support. ' Wan Hao said.
According to the data provided by Lion Bridge, the logistics market in China has a production value of 12 trillion yuan, of which transportation costs account for 50%, which is 660 million yuan, and road transportation accounts for 78% of it, which is about 5 trillion yuan. market.
'And in the road transport, the trunk line is about 2 trillion. 'Wan said, 'So, this is a track that can generate hundreds of billions of companies.'
Technology-driven transformation of logistics industry
The integration of logistics industry and technology has a long history. According to Wan Hao, in the business side, client and merchant side, lion bridge has realized intelligent mobile terminal. 'Automatic intelligent identification, online risk control, online All the business of the entire life cycle, such as lending, vehicle positioning, collection management channels, etc., are all done online.
At the same time, big data has also been used to establish the wind control model of Lion Bridge. It is reported that the source of financial risk control data of Lion Bridge has three aspects: central bank credit, third party credit and internet behavior data.
'These data, together with the credit performance of the 110,000 or so customers we have completed in the past five years, can lead to a very good, highly relevant risk model. 'Wan said.
The cooperation between Lionsbridge and Baidu is not limited to autonomous driving. Baidu Finance, Baidu Post Bar, etc. will complement and improve the wind control big data model of Lion Bridge.
Of course, the fundamental change in technology for the logistics industry is still in the underlying equipment, that is, transportation vehicles. This can be seen from the overall investment trend of the industry. Not only Suning Logistics, Jingdong Logistics and other logistics groups are investing in automatic driving research and development, G7 alliance Capital, Prius, Manbang Group, Tucson Future, Zhijia Technology and other entrepreneurial projects have also joined the battle.
In Wan Hao's view, autonomous driving will bring about three changes in logistics and transportation:
1, can save the driver's labor costs.
'Manual costs account for about 20% of logistics and transportation costs. A large truck has an annual operating income of about 1 million. The driver is more than 200,000, and it will continue to rise in the future, because young people do not like to drive trucks. He said.
2, improve fuel economy
According to the statistics of Lion Bridge, the average fuel consumption of the entire fleet is generally about 5% higher than that of the best drivers, and this data 5% will be a huge cost in the logistics industry. 'Because the gross profit is only 5% in the entire logistics industry. That is to say, this 5% fuel consumption can be saved, it will become the profit of the logistics company. This is almost 100% growth.
3, reduce the accident rate
A large number of accidents in long-distance trunk transportation are commonplace, and most of these accidents are not mechanical failures, functional failures, almost all caused by human factors such as fatigue driving, drunk driving, drug driving, and fighting cars.
'This is basically avoided in the automatic driving. ' Wan Hao said. According to Lion Bridge estimates, the damage caused by the accident is about 100 billion yuan per year.
The logistics and transportation industry has clearly become the primary scene of automatic driving. With the strength of all parties, how does Lion Bridge determine its own advantages?
Wan Hao told Titan Media that the biggest advantage of Lion Bridge is the grasp of the application scene.
In Wanxiang's view, autonomous driving will change the ecology of the entire logistics, including the relationship between the owner and the owner, the relationship between the owner and the downstream transceiver department.
'So, there must be a company, practitioner, who is very familiar with and understand the logistics scene, to develop a complete set of systems to support it. Including intelligent dispatching system, settlement system, pricing system, national logistics configuration system. 'Wan said, 'We have to transport millions of tons of goods every year, thousands of lines, thousands of cars, plus 12,000 cars. We know what kind of relationship between cars and goods, know the owner. What is the concern. '
'We think that the mainline logistics driving, there will be a billion-dollar giant company in the future. 'Wan Wan said, 'Because the trunk line logistics is a super-standardized product, it has no personality. The more standard, the easier it is to outsource. The easier it is to outsource, the more standardized the product, its economies of scale are the strongest. And the lion bridge is already ahead.