In 2022, commercialization will become the key word of automatic driving track. The commercialization of L4 automatic driving on the open road has progressed slowly, resulting in layoffs, shutdowns, market value collapse and capital cold winter. For example, the closure of the old unicorn Argo AI was announced because the two major investors, Volkswagen and Ford, believed that the large-scale commercialization of L4 would take time to make profits and interrupted the investment.
In contrast, the commercialization of L4 automatic driving in mining areas with closed scenes was successfully advanced last year. With frequent financing, it has become normal for security officers to get off the train. With the accumulation of early projects, the capability of domestic mine automatic driving manufacturers has been recognized, and a large number of repurchase orders have emerged. Based on the technical advantages and replicable experience of local enterprises, China's mining automatic driving solution suppliers will start to go abroad in 2022.
financing
In 2022, affected by the COVID-19 and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the global economy will be shrouded in recession, and the International Monetary Fund will reduce the world economic growth expectations for several consecutive times. The turbulence and uncertainty of the economic environment make investment behavior more rational and pay more attention to enterprise value.
In this context, the financing of the self-driving track, which has been greatly sought after by the capital in the past few years, has been cold, and many enterprises have also been shut down due to lack of funds, or have taken measures such as layoffs to reduce costs. According to the statistics of Geshi Automobile, 125 financing events were disclosed in the domestic automatic driving field in 2022, which was basically the same as that in 2021, but the total amount of financing disclosed in the accumulation declined significantly, and the capital was more focused on the subdivision of the track, and the potential enterprises that could complete the commercialization closed-loop could still continue to obtain investment.
Last year, in terms of the single segment of the mine automatic driving circuit, the major domestic automatic driving solution suppliers completed a total of six financing, with a single financing scale of up to 300 million yuan, far exceeding the financing level of most automatic driving enterprises last year.
From the perspective of the overall financing scale, Zhongke Huituo (hereinafter referred to as Huituo) is far ahead. Last year, Huituo completed two rounds of financing in January and August, consistent with the number of financing in the previous year; The financing scale exceeded 300 million yuan, higher than the largest financing scale announced in 2021 (more than 200 million yuan).
The head of CICC SAIC Emerging Industry Fund under CICC Capital, the leading financing and investment institution of the company, said that the institution continued to focus on the driverless field and favored the driverless race track in the mining area. Compared with the open road, trunk logistics and other scenarios, the mining area has stronger demand and willingness to pay for unmanned transformation, and the speed of commercialization will also be faster. In its view, Huituo is in the leading position in the industry in terms of technical maturity, business development, delivery capacity and other aspects, and has the ability to continue to expand.
Sidi Smart Drive also completed a financing of 300 million yuan. The 名媛直播 of Sidi Smart Drive include not only driverless mine trucks and heavy trucks, but also intelligent driving buses and work vehicles. The funds raised in this round will be mainly used for strategic layout and market development in Chengdu-Chongqing region, and will actively participate in "new infrastructure" and "smart city construction" in the future.
Another supplier of mine automatic driving solution that completed two rounds of financing in 2022 is Tage Zhixing. Like Huituo, Tuge Zhixing completed two rounds of financing in seven months, and the total financing scale disclosed was RMB billion, while the scale of round C financing in April last year was not disclosed.
The company said that its C1 round of financing completed in November last year will mainly be used for the continuous polishing of L4 driverless 名媛直播, the business construction of unmanned transportation operation in mining areas, the technical integration of driverless and new energy, and the establishment of overseas market development and service teams.
Alliance Technology, which was officially launched in June 2018, also completed the A-round financing last year, with a scale of tens of millions of yuan. When the financing was completed, Mengzhi Technology said that in terms of the overall intelligent transport capacity business of the open pit mining area, it had completed the verification of the unmanned driving solution and the construction of the operation service system of the open pit mining area, and had the capacity of large-scale replication and business development of the open pit mining area.
Among the above four enterprises, three of them have entered the financing rounds of round C, even round C1, which means that the capital is more optimistic about the commercialization ability and profitability of enterprises, and the influence of enterprises in the industry has reached a certain level. Next, they will further expand their business scale and seize market share. In addition, entering the C round is further away from the final listing.
Safety officer gets off
As the name implies, automatic driving means that the vehicle can achieve autonomous driving, ensure traffic safety and improve efficiency. For the closed mining area scenario, the realization of true automatic driving can not only solve the challenges of difficult recruitment and management, but also reduce the operating costs of labor and fuel and improve the efficiency of mining operations on the basis of improving the safety of the mining area.
However, in the past few years, due to technical difficulties, policy provisions and other factors, both open roads and closed scenes, the application of automatic driving has been equipped with safety officers, which has not fully released the full benefits of automatic driving. In 2022, with the strengthening of the full stack of technical capabilities of automatic driving in the mining area and the formulation of relevant industrial processes and standards, the "safety officer getting off" of the automatic driving track in the mining area gradually became the norm, realizing the "original intention" of automatic driving.
It is the open-pit coal mine project of Dayan Company (Baorixile Energy), a national energy group, in which Huituo participated, that took the lead in realizing the safety officer to get off the train and operate continuously for 24 hours. Under the extremely cold working condition of minus 42 degrees, the 220-ton driverless mine truck is continuously operated in 5-car formation, with a maximum speed of more than 40 km/h, exceeding the 30 km/h specified for manned driving, and the comprehensive efficiency is not lower than that of manned driving, forming a complete unmanned transportation operation system for open-pit coal mines.
In September 2021, the Baorixile project was successfully accepted. Up to now, the project has been operated for 18 months without three shifts of human beings, which is the longest operation record without safety officers in China. Since its construction, the project has achieved two "the first in the world" and three "the first in China", namely, the world's first demonstration project of unmanned mine truck marshalling operation in extremely cold environment, the world's first 5G SA independent networking open-pit coal mine unmanned driving project, the first unmanned transformation project of mining trucks above 200 tons in China, the first project of realizing all-weather three-shift unmanned marshalling operation in China It is the first project in China to realize the marshalling operation of mining trucks without safety personnel.
In 2022, several projects of Huituo have successively realized "safety officer getting off". For example, in the Hualian Zinc-Indium Mining Area of Yuntin Group, Huituochao Project is expected to realize the fully unmanned and heavy-loaded operation of the mining card, which is the first project in the global non-ferrous industry to operate completely unmanned marshalling of the mining card; At the Chengmenshan Copper Mine of Jiangxi Copper Industry Group, Huituo participated in the successful acceptance of the articulated mine truck automatic driving project, which became the first articulated mine truck unmanned driving project in China. It can automatically complete the whole process of "loading - transporting - unloading" under the "real unmanned" state, ensuring the safety and stability of mine production.
Last year, Huituo and Aerospace Heavy Industry completed the functional test of 18 driverless trucks in Harwusu Open-pit Coal Mine of Guoneng Zhuneng Group, completed the installation and deployment of the cooperative operation management system of 3 electric shovels and 16 auxiliary equipment, and realized the cooperative operation with driverless trucks. The project began the operation test of driverless truck marshalling on April 24 last year. As of December 20, driverless trucks had operated 4859 times, with a total transportation mileage of 19511 kilometers and a total stripping volume of 510195 cubic meters.
In Heidaigou Open-pit Coal Mine, another coal mine of Guoneng Zhuneng Group, Huituo United Aerospace Heavy Industry has also completed the functional test of 18 driverless trucks. In the first half of 2022, it has completed a total of 2220 vehicles, 16716.8 kilometers and 246604 cubic meters of stripping. It is reported that the Zhuneng Project (including Harwusu Opencast Coal Mine and Heidaigou Opencast Coal Mine) has 165 large mining trucks and nearly 1000 auxiliary operation vehicles, which is the largest unmanned open-pit mine project in the world.
In China Huaneng Yimin Open-pit Mine, Huituo's participation in the project of automatic operation of unmanned mining dump trucks in full working conditions has successfully passed the second stage of acceptance, which can realize that under the condition of "safety officer getting off", unmanned dump trucks and electric shovels can carry out full-process and full-automatic combined transportation operations, and under the condition of real daily production operations, there is no safety officer marshalling and transportation for 72 hours, achieving the safe operation of the "mining, transportation and platoon" full-process production link, At the same time, the operation efficiency of the safety officer getting off the train can reach more than 90% of the manual driving efficiency, and the industry benchmark will be set again.
In addition to Huituo, enterprises such as Easy-controlled Smart Drive and Tage Smart Drive also started the road of "safety officer getting off" this year.
After two years of exploration, easy-controlled intelligent driving realized the normalized "safety officer getting off" of driverless wide-body vehicles in the transportation link at the Zhundong Open-pit Coal Mine of the National Energy Group in June 2022, which can realize the two-shift 24-hour real driverless driving, with the maximum speed of 35km/h, and the driverless efficiency reaching 80% of the artificial efficiency. According to the company's plan, it is expected to realize the large-scale commercial landing of driverless transportation operation in 2024.
In September last year, easy-controlled intelligent driving also said that at that time, the overall efficiency of its driverless system could reach 70-80% of that of manned driving, and it would further improve the efficiency in the future.
In the first half of 2022, the National Energy Group's "Shengli No. 1 Mine Truck Driverless Technology Application Project", in which Tage Zhixing participated, began the "safety officer off" trial operation, and has achieved the seven-day X24-hour non-safety officer marshalling operation of 220 tons of unmanned large mine trucks, with the maximum number of single hauling vehicles exceeding 100. In the late June of last year, the unmanned transportation project of Tage Zhixing Ordos Yongshun wide-body vehicle has achieved 24-hour "normalized operation of removing safety officers", and its transportation efficiency has also reached more than 80%.
Getting off the bus is an important milestone in the development of driverless driving, but it is not the end point. After the large-scale commercial operation of unmanned driving, it is still an important task for major enterprises to continuously improve the operation efficiency.
For example, the daily production efficiency of Huituo Huaneng Yimin Open-pit Mine Project has reached more than 90% of the manual operation efficiency. It is expected that the driverless operation efficiency of this project will increase to 120% of the manual operation efficiency this year. At that time, the effect of cost reduction and efficiency increase brought by automatic driving to the mining area will be more obvious.
Repurchase
At the beginning of 2020, the eight national ministries and commissions jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Intelligent Development of Coal Mines, which clearly put forward the main goal of "realizing intelligent continuous operation and unmanned transportation in open-pit coal mines" by 2025. After successfully realizing the scale operation without safety officers, many mine driverless manufacturers take "unmanned mining" as the goal of the next stage.
Unmanned mining is a gradual process. Generally speaking, the automatic driving manufacturer will reach a trial operation project with the mining company at the initial stage, and if the effect meets the expectation, it will be converted into a commercial order; As the order project passes the acceptance and reaches or even exceeds the mining party's standard, the mining party will add the order, which is what the industry calls repurchase. The repurchase rate is also known as the wind vane of the whole mine's unmanned. Huituo in the industry took the lead in ushering in the explosive growth of repurchase orders, and the most capable state-owned enterprise, Energy Mining, based on its efficient and stable service capacity in the early stage, once again increased its trust. The year 2023 will certainly drive a new wave of industry re-purchase, and the unmanned construction of small and medium-sized mining enterprises will also follow up.
For example, Huituo also won a repurchase order for the Baorixile open-pit coal mine project of the National Energy Group mentioned above. It is reported that this order is not only the largest single order for unmanned transformation of mining areas in 2022 bidding in China, but also the largest unmanned project directly signed by scientific and technological enterprises and national energy and mining enterprises so far. It not only marks the further deepening of the implementation of driverless technology in national large-scale open-pit coal mines, but also reflects that Huituo's technical strength and large-scale implementation and service ability have won recognition and trust.
Only last November, Huituo also announced two major repurchase orders. At the end of November, Huituo won the bid for the unmanned mine dump truck automatic operation project of Huaneng Yimin Coal and Power Company in full working conditions, which was successfully landed in China Huaneng Yimin Open-pit Coal Mine. This is the second cooperation between Huituo and China Huaneng after completing the first phase of unmanned mine truck project in Yimin Open-pit Coal Mine in 2021. According to the plan, Huaneng Yimin Open-pit Mine will basically realize intelligent mining and stripping, continuous operation and unmanned transportation by the end of 2025. By the end of 2030, the intelligent coal mine will be fully built, and Huituo will continue to provide technical support for it.
Another repurchase order announced by Huituo in November is the Yangquan Jidong Cement 5G+Smart Mine Project. The project was jointly built by Huituo, Jinyu Jidong Cement and China Unicom, and the second phase of construction was officially launched in November last year. It is reported that this project is the first pure electric, digital, green and intelligent mine project in the domestic cement industry. The second phase of the project will further promote the process of unmanned mining in the mining area.
Earlier, Huituo Intelligent also obtained a repurchase order for open-pit coal mine from China Coal Pingshuo Group Co., Ltd. The two sides will build a 5G+driverless smart mine project in Pingshuo East Opencast Coal Mine, and realize the unmanned and intelligent collaborative operation of the whole process of "mining, transportation and drainage" in the coal mine in the "1+7+N" layout mode. This is the second smart mine project that Huituo cooperates with China Coal Pingshuo Group. As early as 2020, Huituo helped China Coal Group, China Coal Pingshuo Group and China Coal Xi'an Design Institute to establish the first smart mine development and test base in China at Antaibao Opencast Coal Mine in Pingshuo.
Re-purchase benefits from the large-scale replication of the project and the high recognition of the industry. The construction of large open-pit mines is the beacon benchmark of the industry. In terms of the current scale of the open pit coal mine, it needs to be jointly constructed by science and technology enterprises and energy mining enterprises on the basis of multiple repurchases. The intelligent construction of the whole mine is the next milestone in the development of the industry. However, in 2022, the cement industry will emerge as a new force, leading the coal mine to realize unmanned construction.
Compared with the coal mine, the cement mine does not need to set up a waste dump. The scene is relatively simple, involving only two links of mining and transportation. In addition, the small scale of the cement mine makes it convenient to quickly improve efficiency, so the unmanned landing speed is faster.
In addition to the above mentioned Huituo Yangquan Jidong Cement 5G+Smart Mine Project, Huituo, Hainan Huasheng Tianya Cement and China Mobile jointly built the Hainan Changjiang Huasheng Green Mine 5G driverless project, which was also officially signed. The project will apply technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, big data and cloud services to realize the unmanned operation of the whole process of "loading, transporting and unloading", assist the safe, stable and efficient operation of the mine, and achieve the goal of unmanned transformation of the whole mine.
In November 2022, the Jurong Taini Intelligent Mine Project, which was jointly developed by Sidi Smart Drive and Taiwan Cement, Dimai Technology and Sany Heavy Equipment, was officially launched. The 14 unmanned pure electric mining trucks have achieved 7 * 16 hours of production operation without safe takeover in the Jurong and Taini mining areas, and have entered the normalized fully driverless production stage, while the Jurong mining area of Taini has also achieved the full mining area coverage of driverless pure electric mining trucks. The project has been running for more than one month and has passed the acceptance smoothly.
go to sea
In the field of automatic driving, the technology of Chinese enterprises is at the forefront of the world, and unmanned driving in mining areas is no exception.
Although domestic mine driverless manufacturers started late, they have developed rapidly and have formed a closed loop in business model. From a technical point of view, at present, all players have basically realized the single car intelligence, while the head enterprise technology deployment represented by Huituo is more perfect, covering the car-road-cloud. The working conditions of domestic mining areas are more rigorous, and the requirements for technology are higher. However, as mentioned above, a number of domestic mining area driverless manufacturers have achieved normalized and unmanned operation in many projects, which proves that the technology is mature enough.
Compared with overseas manufacturers, the solutions of domestic manufacturers are more adaptable and flexible. Huatai Securities believes that in the middle of the industrial chain of intelligent driving in the mining area, many foreign main engine manufacturers concurrently play multiple roles in the middle, while the middle of the domestic industrial chain is mainly the cooperation mode of automatic driving scheme manufacturers, construction machinery manufacturers, and communication equipment manufacturers. The establishment of ecological cooperation relationship is conducive to creating more flexible personalized customization schemes.
Based on the above advantages, in 2022, China's mining automatic driving manufacturers will take advantage of the country's high-level opening-up policy and officially go overseas. Last November, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Thailand, Thailand Siam Cement Group (SCG), Thailand Advanced Info Services Public Co., Ltd. (AIS), Huawei, Huituo and Yutong announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly build Thailand's first 5G+self-driving smart green mine project.
It is reported that the project will be located in the Saraburi mining area of SCG in Thailand, with a total investment of US $10 million. As mentioned earlier in Jidong Cement, China Resources Cement, Jurong Taini and other projects, the SCG project will also use unmanned electric mine cards. For driverless vehicles, new energy vehicles are considered as the best carrier. In the mining area scenario, the pure electric mine card can not only achieve zero emissions, but also reduce fuel consumption by more than 90%. Therefore, under the global trend of carbon neutrality, the penetration rate of pure electric vehicles in mining areas will also gradually increase, making a great contribution to green mines.
In addition to new energy-powered vehicles, the comprehensive application of cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, automatic driving, cloud computing, etc., can build Thailand's SCG Saraburi mining area into a green, intelligent, efficient and safe new mine.
As a matter of fact, Huituo has formulated the strategic goal of going to sea in 2021. Before this trip to the sea, Huituo, Huawei and Yutong have implemented several unmanned and intelligent projects for mining enterprises such as Jidong Cement and China Resources Cement of Jinyu Group in China. This cooperation with Thailand's largest cement manufacturer and Thailand's largest telecom operator can apply the experience formed in China to the mining area in Thailand.
This Sino-Thailand enterprise cooperation smart mine project is not only China's first smart mine project to sea, but also a major milestone event for Chinese manufacturers to break the monopoly of overseas giants, proving that China's advanced technology has the strength to expand globally.
As of the press release, Huituo signed a strategic agreement with the Bangkok Innovation Cooperation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The two sides will make full use of their core competitiveness and policies and platforms such as the "the Belt and Road" and the ASEAN Free Trade Port to carry out strategic cooperation, complement each other's strengths and jointly expand the market in Southeast Asia.
Other mining area driverless solution suppliers have also begun to take sailing as one of the starting points. In 2021, Tage Zhixing began to plan and layout overseas business on the "mining, transportation and drainage" unmanned operation scheme in the key links of the mine. According to the introduction of Tage Zhixing, the company is currently planning unmanned driving projects in overseas mining areas.
Hu Xinyi, the founder and CEO of Bolai Technology, also said last year that Bolai Technology has now established overseas business cooperation with regard to the plan to sea for unmanned mining solutions and will implement it.
Summary: From the four key words above, we can see that the mine automatic driving track has entered the large-scale operation period. With the help of capital, technology and policies, it is believed that the penetration rate will increase significantly in the future and achieve a market scale of hundreds of billions.
