China's driverless technology in mining areas outperforms Waymo: While the inflection point for Robotaxi hasn't arrived, they've already earned 1 billion yuan annually.

"This will be a press conference for the history books."

On the morning of October 11, 2024, Tesla held the "Robotaxi Day" event at the Warner Bros. Discovery Studios in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised that the fully autonomous "Cybercab" would start production in 2026.

But those familiar with Musk's style know that this is another launch event with far more promises than details.

However, the most surprising thing is that while Musk is obsessed with his word - game about "achieving Robotaxi next year", on the other side of the earth, in the coal mines in the far - northwest border of China, another type of robot - driverless mining trucks - have been shuttling day and night in those huge mines and making real money.

Industry leaders represented by "Yikong Zhijia" have deployed thousands of L4 - level driverless mining trucks in these coal mines. According to official information, the annual revenue in 2024 was nearly 1 billion yuan - this figure has exceeded that of Waymo, the pioneer in the driverless field.

So far, it can't be completely said that this is the "iPhone moment" for high - level autonomous driving. But both these mining area autonomous driving companies and the investors behind them are excitedly waiting for the spark in their hands to become a key path to illuminate the future AI world.

What's particularly interesting to the outside world is that by entering the seemingly insignificant mining area scenario, they have achieved an "unexpected journey" in cracking the commercialization problem in the autonomous driving field and are likely to bring key inspiration for the full implementation of autonomous driving.

What exactly did they experience to find the key to unlock the commercial operation of autonomous driving?

There's Waymo in California,

and there are scenario practitioners in China

Compared with Waymo's independent operation at the end of 2016, the large - scale emergence of Chinese autonomous driving startups was actually not late.

Star Robotaxi companies like Pony.ai and WeRide, as well as autonomous driving companies currently active in mining areas such as Yikong Zhijia, Tuge Zhixing, Zhongke Huituo, and Xidi Zhijia, were mostly established between 2016 and 2017.

Moreover, from the very beginning, these Chinese autonomous driving startups chose different scenarios - most of the highly - regarded players took L4 - level Robotaxi as the core scenario and competed on the same track with Silicon Valley star startups like Waymo and Cruise.

At that time, people generally believed that Robotaxi would hit the road around 2020, triggering a revolution in transportation. The market prospect was limitless, and it was a "Mount Everest project" capable of reconstructing the trillion - level large - scale transportation and traffic ecosystem. At the same time, Robotaxi was the technological crown of autonomous driving, representing the poetry and the distant land in the hearts of autonomous driving entrepreneurs.

But some Chinese companies chose to interpret this technological change from another direction, that is, to implement high - level autonomous driving in closed scenarios/the dusty mining areas.

This required courage.

After all, choosing the mining area autonomous driving track was not a mainstream narrative for entrepreneurs and investors at that time. Compared with Robotaxi, this kind of dirty and unglamorous working environment and professional image were not what most star entrepreneurs yearned for. More importantly, the market for mining area autonomous driving seemed neither large enough nor attractive enough.

But in fact, this was a judgment based on stereotypes about mining area autonomous driving and an absolute misjudgment of a multi - trillion - yuan track.

One of the reasons for this misjudgment was that many people judged the market size of driverless mining vehicles based on the annual sales volume of mining engineering vehicles and concluded that the market space was only a few billion yuan.

But in fact, the market size of L4 - level autonomous driving should be measured by technological services. Just as the market size of Robotaxi is usually not measured by the fleet size but should be calculated based on the GMV of transportation services.

From this logic, although the number of driverless vehicles in mining areas is less than that of Robotaxi, the output value per vehicle and the profit from autonomous driving technological services are far higher than those of Robotaxi. After multiplying the two, there is also a market size of hundreds of billions of yuan in the Chinese market and over a trillion yuan in the global market.

This made mining area autonomous driving companies represented by Yikong Zhijia, Tuge Zhixing, and Zhongke Huituo realists in the Robotaxi fantasy.

In the reality where almost all supporting facilities such as technology, infrastructure, and laws and regulations were lacking, these companies identified some opportunities that emerged during the industry's feverish period and used a systematic strategic thinking to turn this "opportunity" into a "stepping stone" towards autonomous driving rather than a vain castle in the air.

Because in a closed scenario like a mining area, the commercialization conditions, including technology and customers, are basically in place.

Technologically, with the help of roadside equipment and relatively fixed routes, there are no bottlenecks in implementing L4 - level autonomous driving, and a closed - loop business model can be achieved one step ahead.

This is completely different from the current situation of Robotaxi, which is still restricted by technological risks and regulatory limitations.

Another key factor is that mining area owners have a "rigid demand" for high - level autonomous driving.

For many years, "safe production" has been the North Star goal pursued by all mining area owners. The personal injuries and economic losses caused by potential safety accidents are too serious. Reducing potential personal injuries through autonomous driving technology while achieving cost reduction and efficiency improvement is the pain point and itch point of mining area owners.

It's worth mentioning that larger - scale mining area owners also received "market education" about autonomous driving earlier - they had long in - depth understanding of the overseas "driverless mines" built by Caterpillar and Komatsu and regarded it as a development trend.

This gives them enough motivation to try high - level autonomous driving in mines and pay for it.

Being able to break out of the traditional cognitive framework at the right time and identify the opportunities brought by driverless mining areas is an ultimate test of entrepreneurs' thinking, technological trends, and industry insights.

However, Yikong Zhijia and others have achieved this. They found opportunities in nearly 70,000 mines in China and verified the business model, thus getting rid of the bad reputation of the driverless "money - burning black hole".

This is a real breakthrough - globally speaking.

Focus and concentration to overcome the trough

In the early stage of the development of driverless mining areas, it received some exposure as a branch of the autonomous driving concept, but not much.

This led to a strange phenomenon - when Robotaxi was booming, driverless mining areas didn't get many benefits, and when Robotaxi faced a trough, it dragged driverless mining areas into the darkest moment.

For many years, Musk has been repeating his seemingly fixed set of words in the Robotaxi field - "We will start operation next year", "We will have one million Robotaxis on the road next year", etc.

This gave rise to the Robotaxi boom.

But starting from 2019, autonomous driving suddenly reached an "inflection point" - investors' enthusiasm cooled down.

Autonomous driving thus bid farewell to the stage of financing by drawing pie on PPT and entered a "cooling - off period".

Many once - famous companies were forced to downsize their business or even close. Apple's autonomous driving department laid off employees, Uber's autonomous driving department did the same, and Drive.ai was acquired.

Driverless mining areas were also greatly affected.

Mining area owners also began to find that even for autonomous driving in simple scenarios, the gap from the demo to large - scale application had not been bridged. The driverless mine pies drawn by some companies finally ended up as "tourist attractions".

So mining area owners began to wait and see and stopped investing in and trying autonomous driving.

This wait - and - see attitude, combined with the sudden turn of the capital market, led driverless mining areas into an ice age that lasted for many years.

Even the most experienced entrepreneurs or investors would inevitably be frustrated by the dismal situation of the autonomous driving industry at that time. High - level autonomous driving has reached a crossroads again: in this "value - return" stage, it's time to compete in strategic determination.

Not everyone can remain calm in the face of a major crisis, and not every autonomous driving startup can maintain strategic determination in this industry avalanche - knowing who they are and where they are going.

But there are indeed a few exceptions, such as Yikong Zhijia and other companies.

To some extent, Yikong Zhijia not only has this strategic determination but can even be said to be quite good at it.

This is related to the boss of this company.

Shen Xiao, a partner at Steadview Capital, once said that Wason, the founder of Yikong Zhijia, could be called a "strategic master".

Facing the trough period, Wason's requirements for the team were very clear, that is, to stay focused on the driverless mining area scenario and deeply polish the technology in the scenario.

Someone once said that he didn't understand technology, but from the perspective of his entrepreneurial experience, he was one of the earliest game entrepreneurs and later deeply participated in the mining industry during his consecutive entrepreneurial process and had a good understanding of the needs of mining areas.

The most crucial thing is that he understands the rhythm of entrepreneurship and knows what to do at what time.

Moreover, he can completely entrust the judgment of technological trends to real strategic - minded technology experts.

So he found professionals who really understand technology and the industry trend.

For example, Zhang Lei, the co - founder and chairman of Yikong Zhijia, was once the person in charge of the autonomous driving R & D project at Yutong Bus, and most of his team members come from well - known enterprises and teams such as Baidu, Yutong, FAW, and the Tsinghua University driverless vehicle team.

Lin Qiao, the vice - president of Yikong Zhijia, was once the person in charge of the hardware at Alibaba's Cainiao ET Logistics Laboratory.

This technology team is well - versed in the implementation path of high - level autonomous driving and firmly believes that mining areas are one of the most effective paths for the earliest commercial implementation.

This enables Yikong Zhijia to anchor its goal even in the industry trough and not lose the main contradiction for the so - called "quick money", thus avoiding resource dispersion and strategic misfocus.

In fact, through the comparison of the large - scale "unmanned" realization in overseas large mines, industry insiders know that L4 - level autonomous driving will sooner or later play an important role in the bright future of driverless mines. But before this vision is realized, being able to endure loneliness, stay focused, and resist the temptation of various so - called "shortcuts" has become a scarce quality for entrepreneurs.

Yikong Zhijia has achieved this.

For example, during the most severe period of the public health event, many technology companies came to a standstill, but the algorithm engineers and the team of Yikong Zhijia carried out closed - loop development in the mine for six months.

This enabled the Yikong Zhijia team, not labeled as "stars" or "tech geniuses", to gain a first - mover advantage in the field of autonomous driving algorithms through in - depth polishing in the scenario.

In addition to autonomous driving algorithms, there is another less - mentioned but more crucial technological field - the by - wire chassis. For a long time in the past, the reason for the poor experience of L4 - level autonomous driving in mining areas was that the adaptation between the by - wire chassis and the autonomous driving system was far from perfect.

As a key tool for achieving high - level autonomous driving, the by - wire chassis mainly includes four major systems: by - wire braking, by - wire steering, by - wire shifting, and by - wire throttle.

If any one of the systems has a problem, the whole system will have a short - board effect.

As a technology service provider, Yikong Zhijia faced a new choice.

This is not only a problem for Yikong Zhijia but also a problem for the implementation of driverless mining areas as a whole.

As we all know, the by - wire chassis is integrated into the mining truck, but vehicle manufacturers only want to sell cars and are not willing to invest an extra cent in L4 - level autonomous driving.

Without the support of the by - wire chassis, even if Yikong Zhijia's algorithm is far ahead in the industry, it cannot be transmitted to the wheels.

On the other hand, mining area owners won't take action without seeing results - if they don't see the benefits brought by driverless mining areas, they won't continue.

The only way for Yikong Zhijia is to enter the deep - water area of the by - wire chassis to have a chance to break the curse of business model implementation.

Yikong Zhijia really did it.

At the end of 2021, Yikong Zhijia officially established a research and development team for the vehicle control system and the by - wire chassis system. At that