Tsinghua-affiliated intelligent driving company wins hundreds of millions of yuan in financing

Is autonomous driving “alive”?

The year 2023 will not be easy for many intelligent driving companies.

Compared with the concepts that ChatGPT has popularized as the "critical point of AI technology", the benefits reaped by autonomous driving are very limited.

Not only has the "spring chill" not faded, but the company has also been hit by a series of "bad news" such as financing difficulties, project suspensions, and layoffs. Even TuSimple, the leading smart card company known as the "first stock in autonomous driving," delisted after its market value dropped by 99%.

However, since the beginning of 2024, when Sinian Intelligent Driving won the first financing of several hundred million yuan in 2024, Qiangua Technology, DeepWay, Haomo Zhixing, Jiushi Intelligence, and Yikong Intelligent Driving... financing of several billion yuan has become a bit "common", and related supply chain unicorns are also queuing up for listing. The entire industry seems to be "rejuvenating".

Given the long-cycle nature of the industry, whether it is smart cards or Robotaxi, even hundreds of millions of yuan in financing may only be a "solution to the immediate crisis" for companies that are "burning money."

After a cold winter, autonomous driving is unlikely to regain its vitality overnight. Its renewed popularity is closely related to technology, market, and policy. In the second half of the intelligentization, mining, ports, trunk logistics and other sub-sectors have entered a new trend due to the superposition of various factors.

Beijing unicorn wins hundreds of millions of yuan in financing

On May 7, Beijing Mainline Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Mainline Technology") officially announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan in financing. It is reported that this round of financing was jointly invested by the leading industrial capital Civil Aviation Investment Fund, government funds Shunchuang Industrial Investment, and Changzhou Zhonglou Financial Holdings. The funds raised will be used for the company's autonomous driving technology and product research and development, mass production, and to help expand domestic and foreign markets and build an autonomous driving freight network.

The main line technology that originated from the National Key Laboratory of Tsinghua University is truly "Tsinghua-style".

The company's founder and CEO, Zhang Tianlei, graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua University and studied under Academician Li Deyi, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a leader in the field of artificial intelligence and driving. Zhang Tianlei has worked at Microsoft Research Asia and Baidu. He is one of the "30 founding members" of Baidu's driverless car and a core member of the technical committee. He has decades of research experience in the field of driverless driving, is well versed in the development of driverless technology, and has insight into industry development trends.

Since its establishment in 2017, the company has been committed to the research and development and application of L4 artificial intelligence truck technology to create safer, smarter and more efficient technological transportation capabilities.

As of press time, Mainline Technology has completed six rounds of financing, with two rounds of financing disclosing amounts of several hundred million yuan. Well-known companies and investment institutions such as iFlytek, NIO Capital, BAIC Industrial Investment, Bosch, and Zhongwei Capital are also among the shareholders.

From liberating driving to improving productivity

In the field of intelligent driving, the first to become popular was Robotaxi.

The high degree of openness and complexity of public roads make them a key obstacle to the implementation of autonomous driving. Before new technological breakthroughs come, limited scene entry may be a more realistic development path. Therefore, autonomous trucks focusing on trunk logistics, port transportation and other fields have attracted a lot of capital.

The reasons for capital optimism are, first, the huge market size. It is estimated that the domestic trunk logistics market can reach trillions of yuan per year; second, with labor costs becoming increasingly high today, driverless technology can just make up for the shortage of drivers.

It is precisely based on a clear understanding of the obstacles in public road scenes that Mainline Technology regards port hubs as the strategic starting point for the company's autonomous driving commercialization.

Mainline Technology has begun to deploy port scenarios since its establishment. It has currently implemented intelligent unmanned port solutions in important hubs such as Tianjin Port, Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, Yantai Port, Hefei Port, and CNOOC Huizhou Logistics Base, and has delivered more than 300 autonomous driving trucks in total.

In the company's other key area of ​​trunk logistics, Mainline Technology has obtained operating licenses in Beijing, Shandong, the Yangtze River Delta, Inner Mongolia and other regions, providing autonomous driving transportation services to leading logistics companies such as JD.com and China Storage Intelligent Transportation, with an operating mileage of over 20 million kilometers.

From the perspective of the overall market, compared with passenger cars, commercial vehicle companies are less sensitive to price and more willing to pay. In addition, due to limited policy dividends and scene complexity, commercial vehicle intelligent driving companies in limited scenes will enter the commercial operation stage earlier. The development of Mainline Technology confirms this view.

However, in the final analysis, the key to winning the favor of customers lies in the tangible economic value brought by self-driving trucks, and for logistics companies, the biggest demand is to reduce transportation costs.

It is reported that the current L4 autonomous driving truck of Mainline Technology can replace 2-3 drivers, saving a lot of labor costs. At the same time, the energy consumption optimization function of the unmanned driving system can also save 3%-10% of fuel consumption for enterprises. Considering that the aging population will lead to a greater driver shortage in the future, the value of autonomous driving trucks will be further highlighted.

For Mainline Technology, the commercialization path of autonomous driving has shifted from "driving liberation" to "productivity improvement." Unlike many Internet companies and new car-making forces that blindly pursue "black technology," Mainline Technology, relying on its deep technical accumulation, has taken cost reduction and efficiency improvement as the core of its product positioning from the beginning.

Of course, Mainline Technology has not completely given up on developing open road scenarios. According to media reports, the company is exploring emerging application scenarios such as urban nighttime delivery and garbage cleaning to seek breakthroughs.

However, compared with other autonomous driving companies, Mainline Technology is more cautious in the layout of highly complex scenarios. The company pays more attention to relying on the advantages of closed or semi-closed scenarios to open up the closed loop of technology, products, and operations to achieve sustainable commercial operations.

Opportunities and challenges coexist

In the national new infrastructure construction plan, intelligent transportation systems and logistics networks are also listed as two major priorities. As many places have successively relaxed favorable policies such as autonomous driving road testing and commercial operation license application, it has brought broader development space for autonomous driving companies such as Mainline Technology.

From the perspective of technological development trends, the continuous maturity of emerging technologies such as 5G and AI will further enable the performance improvement of autonomous driving algorithms and help companies break through technical bottlenecks in complex scenarios on public roads.

However, opportunities also come with challenges.

At present, to truly realize the commercialization of autonomous driving, it is necessary to overcome the three major bottlenecks of productization, operation and data. For enterprises, obtaining financing is only the first step to "survive" in the fiercely competitive autonomous driving track.

Although the autonomous driving industry is currently experiencing a period of pain, in the long run, the market will still present a situation of a hundred schools of thought contending. To win in the future competition, long-term persistence and innovation are needed. Moreover, if unmanned vehicles are to be used on a large scale, upgrading the existing infrastructure is inevitable, and relevant policies and regulations will also take a long time to test and improve.

Whether Mainline Technology can eventually achieve the ultimate goal of an autonomous freight network still needs to stand the test of time and reality. But what is certain is that the company has at least explored a feasible development path for the industry and used practice to break the outside world's pessimistic expectations of autonomous driving.