From unmanned transfer vehicles to industrial unmanned operations, Yicheng Innovation has raised 200 million yuan in Series C financing | 36Kr Exclusive
36Kr has exclusively learned that Shenzhen Yicheng Autonomous Driving Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yicheng Innovation") has recently completed Series C financing with a total amount of 200 million yuan. Investors in this round include Yueke Group, Shanda Investment, Anhui State-owned Investment, Foshan Venture Capital and others. It is reported that the funds will be used for factory capacity upgrading, core technology iteration and commercial deployment.
Founded in 2017, Yicheng Innovation is positioned as a provider of L4-level autonomous driving end commercial vehicles and intelligent driving solutions, focusing on providing standardized products and landing application solutions for industrial and commercial scenarios.
Song Chaozhong, CEO of Yicheng Innovation, revealed to 36Kr that the company's partners cover scenarios such as industrial manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, ports and mines. "We already have hundreds of customers, whose core feature is that the park covers a very large area." In such scenarios, the intelligent unmanned transfer vehicles under Yicheng Innovation have become the main landing product.
Song Chaozhong said that the intelligent transfer vehicles under Yicheng Innovation come in multiple capacities, with an average selling price of about 400,000 yuan per vehicle, and the gross profit margin per vehicle is higher than that of traditional transfer vehicles. The current annual production capacity can reach 3,000 units. "After this round of financing, our goal is to increase the production capacity to 10,000 units."
He told 36Kr that in the past, AGV products were usually used for horizontal transfer in closed parks. Due to the slow speed, AGV products are difficult to meet customers' demand for transfer efficiency. "Our products are relatively leading in the evaluation of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. I think the reason lies in the technical architecture. At present, some similar products in the industry still control the unmanned vehicle chassis based on the product logic of AGV, which will bring many restrictions."
Yicheng Innovation's current best-selling product is the 5-10 ton unmanned transfer vehicle. Song Chaozhong said that the company's core technology is unmanned driving algorithms and software, covering the complete technical link from perception, decision-making to execution. At the product level, its unmanned transfer vehicles do not need to be re-technically adapted to different parks, and the unmanned driving algorithm supports the vehicle to independently plan and select routes.
In addition, Song Chaozhong told 36Kr that unmanned transfer vehicles have very strict requirements for control algorithms. "Among the products we are currently developing, there are vehicles with a maximum load of 100 tons. The whole vehicle is large in size and weight, and the sensor deployment and perception algorithms are different from those of small vehicles. Moreover, due to the large physical inertia, the braking delay and difficulty of large vehicles are greater. However, we have achieved a speed of 25km/h, while other players in the industry are generally still at the level of 3km/h".
He revealed to 36Kr that intelligent unmanned transfer vehicles are still innovative products in the industry, and many enterprises buy them for display needs. "But our customers use our products at a very high intensity, running seven or eight trips a day, which is almost the same as the frequency of human drivers."
The core of the new round of commercialization will be to expand overseas markets. At present, the company is adapting products to overseas market policies and climate. "At first, overseas customers still had concerns, but after visiting our domestic customers' parks and seeing the effect of our products in real scenarios, their concerns were greatly reduced."
In addition, after this round of financing, the company will focus on upgrading its business model, upgrading single-point unmanned transportation to factory-wide integrated unmanned operation. That is to realize the full-link independent unmanned operation of in-plant handling, transportation and park material transfer.
For in-plant handling and transportation, Yicheng Innovation has developed an intelligent robot with a wheeled chassis + manipulator structure, which is responsible for the in-situ handling of small components, loading and unloading and other links.
"We focus on investing in large models. In addition to the intelligent driving model responsible for material translation behind the transfer vehicles, the second part is to train the manipulators and clamps responsible for vertical material handling, and the third part is the large model training for system and human interaction, so that the system can better and more naturally understand human instructions and needs," Song Chaozhong said. The team has carried out actual data collection for nearly two years, and the work efficiency of the first batch of products can already reach about 60% of that of human employees.
At the same time, Yicheng Innovation's full-domain integrated unmanned operation solution is currently being tested and implemented. "As early as the third quarter of next year, this complete workflow can be seen running in real customer parks."
From the perspective of the industry, closed parks are indeed a rare scenario for autonomous driving that can achieve high-frequency operation and quantifiable returns. The park has a large area, high handling frequency and high labor cost. Traditional AGVs are slow and low in efficiency, and there are potential safety hazards in heavy-load scenarios. However, what customers need is not a dazzling demo, but a production tool that can replace human employees and operate stably at high frequency.
Whether the competitiveness of autonomous driving enterprises can be sustained still depends on the large-scale performance of products in actual scenarios and whether the organization and management can keep up with the expansion rhythm.