Baidu Didi ran away with a loss of 2 billion in three years without mass production, China’s first autopilot company was listed on the market.

Baidu Didi ran away with a loss of 2 billion in three years without mass production, China’s first autopilot company was listed on the market.

Xu Dan

2021-04-16 12:32:10

Source: Times Finance

After Tucson is listed in the future, the commercial vehicle autonomous driving market in which it is located may also enter the eve of large-scale landing. Image source: Tuworm Creative At a time when passenger car autonomous driving is not yet mature, the field of truck autonomous driving has given birth to “the world’s first autonomous driving stock”. On April 15th, Eastern Time, the self-driving truck brand “Tucson Future” officially landed on Nasdaq. The opening rose by more than 3%, and the opening price was US$40.25, slightly higher than the IPO price (US$40), but it began to fall after rising to US$41.5, and closed at US$40 on the day, which was flat compared to the IPO issue price. It is foreseeable that after Tucson is listed in the future, the autonomous driving track will be sought after by more capital, and the commercial vehicle autonomous driving market in which it is located may also enter the eve of large-scale landing. In response to more issues related to future business planning after the listing, Times Finance tried to contact Tucson Future, but as of press time, no response has been received. Is the “first share of autonomous driving” worth US$8.787 billion? The autonomous driving track is divided into the passenger car market and the commercial vehicle market. The former, such as Baidu, Didi, etc., directly face C-end consumers, with Robotaxi as the final commercial landing scene; The specific business scenario is unmanned autonomous driving. Tucson Future was established in 2015. In the future, it will mainly provide customers with computer vision-based commercial L4 autonomous driving solutions, high-speed scenes and unmanned transportation solutions for container trucks in the port. Headquartered in Shanghai, with branches in the United States and Beijing, the main market is currently in the United States. Tucson’s future business model has been relatively clear. In July 2020, it launched its own driverless freight network “AFN”. The ecosystem consists of fully automated semi trucks, high-definition digital map routes, strategically placed terminals, and a cloud-based proprietary autonomous operation supervision system TuSimple Connect. composition. Based on this network, Tucson’s future service models mainly include three types:

Cooperate with the shipper. In the future, Tucson will use its own unmanned vehicle fleet operating in an unmanned network to provide shippers with unmanned freight services calculated by mileage.

Cooperate with the carrier. Carriers can purchase driverless trucks, operate them in the driverless freight network, and connect to Tucson’s future driverless systems when necessary.

Fleet. Fleet owners can buy and operate their own fleet of driverless trucks. These unmanned trucks will operate in the unmanned freight network according to the mileage-calculated charging mode.

Since its establishment, Tucson has gone through 10 rounds of financing in the future, and the disclosed amount of E-round financing is 350 million yuan. In addition to the founding team, Tucson’s future largest shareholder is Sina affiliate Sun Dream Inc., which accounts for 20% of Class A shares.

As the first stock of autonomous driving, what is the market value of 8.49 billion U.S. dollars? “From the perspective of Tucson’s current financial indicators such as revenue and profit, as well as its commercialization capabilities, the market value of US$8.49 billion is relatively high. However, Tucson’s future track will have high growth, and market competitors will be relatively If there is less, there is more room for imagination in the future.” Major General Ding, an IT Internet observer, told Times Finance and Economics.

The capital market has always valued autonomous driving very high. Both Baidu Autopilot and Waymo are currently valued at around US$40 billion. However, the market for autonomous driving passenger cars is very large, and the non-commercial vehicle market can match them.

Compared with its peers, Pony Zhixing, which is also on the truck autonomous driving track, is valued at more than US$5.3 billion after the latest round of financing, and Zhijia Technology is valued at US$1 billion. Tucson’s current market value can be regarded as the leader in the future. .

From the point of view of the track, Tucson’s future potential is indeed relatively large. According to an Essence Securities report, the traditional freight truck market in the United States is as high as 800 billion U.S. dollars, with high labor costs, accounting for 43% of operating costs per mile, and the problem of aging drivers is serious. 54% of commercial truck drivers are 45 years of age or older. There is a strong demand for autonomous driving technology.

However, in terms of specific operating conditions, US$8.49 billion may be more “paying for the future.” From the perspective of revenue, Tucson will always be at a loss from 2018 to 2020, with net losses of US$45.03 million, US$84.883 million, 177 million US dollars, a total of about 2 billion yuan. And Tucson said in the future that “a lot of expenses and continuous losses will be incurred in the foreseeable future.

From the perspective of commercialization capabilities, Tucson has not yet achieved mass production in the future. The prospectus discloses that it will cooperate with Navista and Volkswagen’s Traton for pre-installation and mass production to jointly build and deliver L4 unmanned trucks. At present, the vehicle has received 5,700 pre-orders and will be put into production in 2024 as planned .

Before mass production, the level of hardware reliability is not enough, so Tucson’s future half-car test vehicle still needs to be equipped with safety officers and drivers before it can go on the road.

Who is the second “Tucson Future”?

“Like the United States, it is difficult for the passenger car market to give birth to the next Tucson in a short period of time. The commercial sector is still the direction that domestic auto-driving related companies should pay attention to and make efforts.” Major General Ding said.

The passenger car autonomous driving market is vast. Most of the players entering the game are Internet companies with strong capital. Although there have been preliminary results, companies such as Baidu and Didi have already begun road tests, but they are still far from commercialization. The process is difficult.

From the perspective of the technical route alone, the domestic car-road coordinated route is still in the early stage of equipment laying, and it is far from reaching the level of mutual perception between cars and roads and other vehicles. Moreover, the current domestic laws on autonomous vehicles are basically in a blank state.

Foreign “smart bicycles” models are also full of difficulties. Earlier this month, the CEO of waymo, a leading autonomous driving company, resigned. According to foreign media reports, internal employees said Waymo did not have much direction inside, technology stagnated, and senior leaders set goals. unrealistic.

In contrast, self-driving commercial vehicles do not carry people, involve fewer safety issues, and the road conditions are relatively simple and fixed, and are easier to commercialize. The current domestic commercial vehicle autonomous driving fields are mainly truck freight and mines.

In the field of truck freight, Zhijia Technology and Xiaoma Zhixing have respectively completed D round financing and C+ round financing, and become unicorn companies. Among them, Zhijia Technology has introduced Guotai Junan International and Hedosophia as investors, both of which can provide Its listing assists, and according to media reports, it is in the process of SPAC merger negotiation in order to go public through backdoor. However, like Tucson’s future, both have not yet achieved mass production.

However, compared with the American truck freight market, the domestic truck freight market is not mature yet. Chen Mo, the founder of Tucson Future, once publicly mentioned the reasons for prioritizing the development of the American market.

First of all, there are only test licenses in China, and operations are not allowed. If trucks do not have an operating license, they cannot transport goods and cannot be profitable; in the United States, the cost of freight hardware is declining, and labor costs are rising, but the country has not yet reached the intersection; unmanned driving needs to be combined with drop-and-hook and box-drop transportation. Mode (after arriving at the transportation point, the tractor can drop the carriage and hang another carriage, which can shorten the stop time to a minimum), but many domestic trucks and trailers are integrated, and the drop-hang and drop-box rate not enough.

There is also great potential for autonomous driving in mines, with huge market space and high risk, difficulty in recruiting drivers, and strong demand for unmanned operations. According to Chentao Capital’s calculations, the total annual market size of domestic mine autonomous driving exceeds 100 billion.

Domestic mining autonomous driving solution providers are dominated by start-up companies, because mining operations are complex systems engineering, which not only require autonomous driving technology, but also dispatch and fleet management, and Internet of Vehicles communication technologies. Therefore, domestic large-scale equipment companies tend to cooperate in-depth with driverless start-up companies.

Tage Zhixing, a leading company in this field, was established in 2016 and has now completed 8 rounds of financing. Its founder and chief scientist Yu Guizhen stated that it is confident that it will be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board within 1-2 years.

However, according to Chentao Capital’s analysis, mining autonomous driving companies are still in the initial stage of commercial trial operation and field deployment testing. The work efficiency of autonomous driving has not yet been equal to that of manual driving, especially night operations have not yet carried out normal operations. Although many companies have received commercial orders, most of them are pilot projects and have not yet participated in the normal production operations of the mine.

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