Driverless deliveries on the road to reality
On the campus of Harbin Engineering University in Heilongjiang province a yellow unmanned delivery vehicle wound its way steadily among teachers and students.
Arriving at a dormitory building, the vehicle called 25 students who ordered the food at the same time to pick up their takeout orders.
The vehicle was among the first batch of intelligent vehicles the university introduced to help with deliveries. Over the past few weeks a large group of universities in Beijing and Shanghai as well as provinces such as Shandong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu have started using automated delivery vehicles.
Behind this is the broad momentum of commercialization of unmanned deliveries in China.
In Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, automated deliveries are no longer limited to vehicles as drones of SF Express transport boxes of bayberries from a mountaintop to a delivery station far below.
For local farmers, the delivery of bayberries has always been a problem because the fruits bruise easily in ground transport. It used to take more than two hours to deliver the fruit, but now using drones it takes only eight minutes, SF Express said.
For some time now, Chinese technology companies have been stepping up unmanned delivery services, which are expected to generate huge commercial value in businesses that deliver express parcels, takeout food, fresh produce and retail pharmaceuticals.
A report by the investment firm Estar Capital forecast that sales revenue of the country’s terminal distribution market will exceed 300 billion yuan ($47 billion) this year. Terminal distribution refers to logistics that interact with end-users.
In China a sound unmanned distribution business model has been formed with technologies being able to support different needs. The overall industry is expected to eventually enjoy large-scale commercial applications, the report said.
He Xiongsong, executive president of Estar Capital, said it will take time for the country’s automated delivery industry chain to grow and reduce costs.
“Autonomous driving is developing rapidly. One of the main barriers is that the cost of core components such as lidar are relatively high. “At present, some companies can achieve a total vehicle cost of about 200,000 yuan to 250,000 yuan, but others have to pay more than 500,000 yuan for a single car.”