China startup joins driverless race
Trucking industry ripe for move to automation with number of drivers in decline
A Chinese startup with powerful backing plans to test a fleet of selfdriving trucks in Arizona and Shanghai next year, competing with Uber Technologies Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo in transforming the way goods are delivered.
Haulage is ripe for disruption by automation because the industry faces a growing shortage of drivers and transporting cargo between fixed points is less complicated than city driving, says Chen Mo, 33, cofounder and chief executive officer of Beijing-based Tusimple, which is backed by Sina Corp., operator of China’s biggest microblogging site.
Self-driving trucks could cut logistics costs by 40 per cent in the U.S. and 25 per cent in China as they can run longer than human-piloted rigs without rest and save at least 10 per cent on fuel, Chen said. They could also improve safety, especially in China, where trucks kill about 25,000 people a year, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
“It’s natural for us to start the business simultaneously as both countries feature a trucker shortage and huge cargo transportation demand,” Chen said in an interview in his office in Beijing. “China’s trucking industry is costly, inefficient and dangerous” and Tusimple’s technology “can reduce the casualty rate to 25 per cent of the current level.”
The startup plans to order 60 to100 specially retrofitted trucks for the tests from a U.S. truckmaker and China’s Shaanxi Heavy Duty Motor Co. The vehicles will have 10 cam- eras, three radars and a control system to analyze traffic conditions. The plan, regulations permitting, is to introduce commercial services in 2019, initially on two routes: a 192kilometre highway stretch between Tucson and Phoenix in Arizona, and a 32-km leg between a Shanghai port and warehousing, after completing three million miles of road tests in a year.
Instead of selling the automation technology to logistics firms or fleet owners, Tusimple plans to get into the haulage business. Chen said the industry in China is more fragmented than in the U.S., with large numbers of truck owners who lack proper training or insurance.
Tusimple would be ahead of Uber and Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo to start road tests in China, where nine out of 10 of the nation’s 30 million truckers are individuals subcontracted by logistics companies. China hauled 33.6 billion tons of cargo last year, compared with10.4 billion tons in the U.S. The Chinese startup has been testing four trucks in China’s northern port of Caofeidian since July.
Nearly 30 per cent of Chinese truckers have driver fatigue that can lead to slower reaction and inability to keep their eyes open during the early morning and afternoon, according to G7 Networks, a Beijingbased vehicle connectivity technology company that tracks data with equipment on commercial vehicles.
Tusimple has no plans for-driverless passenger cars as intracity driving is much more complex than highway piloting and there’s less of a discernible return in terms of business costs in removing the human driver from a private-hire car, Chen said.
Those economics have attracted others. Tesla Inc. met with California and Nevada agencies about testing an autonomous semitruck after CEO Elon Musk tweeted his ambition to add driverless trucks to the lineup. Waymo — spun off from Google’s self-driving car project — said in June it’s exploring integrating its hardware and software into a truck.
Uber’s truck division is focused on developing self-driving technology in U.S., a media representative for the company said in an email. Alphabet and Tesla didn’t respond to requests for comment on Chinese trials.