Driverless cars bravely venture into the great northwest
“At the beginning, I was a bit resistant. The investment was too large, and I felt this thing might not be very practical. But after using it, it turned out okay.”
In the middle of last year, Cao Weimin (a pseudonym), the owner of an express delivery outlet in the northwest, finally made up his mind to buy a set of unmanned delivery vehicles. The core reason was that it was extremely difficult to recruit workers locally. The area he is in is a famous tourist city. “90% of the people have gone into the tourism industry. It might be impossible to recruit a single person for the express delivery business in a year.”
Liu Xing (a pseudonym), the person - in - charge of an express delivery transfer center in another city in the northwest, also faced the same difficulty before. “There are few migrant workers in the northwest. In the past two years, many new energy factories have been built, which has driven up the wage level. It's hard to recruit people without a daily wage of 5,000 yuan.”
Liu Xing spent more than 200,000 yuan to buy an unmanned delivery vehicle last year. It was the first one in the local area and also the most expensive one purchased so far. Just over a month after Liu Xing bought it, the manufacturer held a new product launch, and the price of the vehicle dropped by 50,000 yuan. Liu Xing found the service provider and got a refund of the 50,000 - yuan price difference. After using it for a year, the price of the vehicle dropped by another 10,000 yuan. The service provider said, “I'll apply to the headquarters to see if we can refund some money.”
Different from the traditional perception that “technological products are usually first popularized in developed regions”, unmanned delivery vehicles are actually being scaled up and put into use earlier in remote areas. Currently, there are already dozens of unmanned delivery vehicles running in Gansu alone, and the number is growing rapidly. Since J&T Express was the first to “take the plunge”, other major express delivery companies have quickly followed suit. Unmanned delivery vehicles are gradually becoming the “standard equipment” for e - commerce in the northwest.
Of course, unmanned delivery vehicles are far from mature at present. There is still much room for improvement in aspects such as battery life, load - carrying capacity, recognition accuracy, and interaction. Currently, they are mostly used as “assistants” rather than “replacements” for manual delivery. However, their ability to control costs and meet delivery deadlines in the “last mile” of express delivery is sufficient to support huge imagination.
Yu Enyuan, the CEO of Neolix, recently said that unmanned delivery vehicles will become the first track in the entire AI field to experience explosive growth. The demand will exceed 100,000 units in 2027.
The New “Labor Force” in the Great Northwest
The first unmanned delivery vehicle purchased by Zhou Weidong (a pseudonym), the owner of a courier station in Gansu, quickly became the focus of the entire county.
Zhou Weidong told Photon Planet that at that time, the surrounding residents were very curious about this new thing. Some people even stopped the vehicle on the road and asked how much it cost. He told them it was about 200,000 yuan. The other person said it was a bit expensive. “If it only cost 70,000 - 80,000 yuan, I would buy one to pick up and drop off my kids at fixed times and places.”
Xue Mei (a pseudonym), the owner of another delivery station in Gansu, had a more intuitive feeling about the benefits brought by unmanned delivery vehicles. She originally had no plan to buy an unmanned delivery vehicle. After seeing a good effect in a neighboring city, she actively contacted the manufacturer and bought one.
In Xue Mei's view, the economic benefits brought by this vehicle are far less immediate than the advertising effect. Groups of journalists came for interviews one after another, and a large number of residents voluntarily posted about this new thing on their WeChat Moments. A few years ago, Xue Mei used to place express delivery advertisements on buses, but now she doesn't need to. The unmanned vehicle has made everyone aware of the express delivery brand she operates.
After Xue Mei bought her first unmanned vehicle, other local express delivery companies also started to follow suit. A certain express delivery brand that didn't have any unmanned vehicles before got approval to purchase ten at once after its person - in - charge reported to the higher - level management that “unmanned delivery vehicles of other brands are everywhere”.
Although the development is rapid, users and local management departments are actually exploring the use of unmanned delivery vehicles in a “groping for stones to cross the river” way. After Liu Xing bought an unmanned vehicle, there were no relevant local policies. Liu Xing actively approached the traffic department and got permission for a trial operation after several communications.
Zhou Weidong believes that his express delivery brand has about 140 outlets in the province, and the number of 40 - plus unmanned vehicles is relatively small. The reason is not that the outlets have no demand, but that the opening of road rights still depends on favorable policies. After he bought his first unmanned vehicle in July, it took about two months before it could actually hit the road. “The district - and - county - level authorities don't know how to handle it either. They can only imitate other cities and gradually explore and open up.”
Currently, most unmanned vehicles cannot enter urban areas, and they are not allowed on busy streets. They mainly operate in the urban - rural fringe and rural areas, where the road conditions are good and there are few people and vehicles. It is reported that a new batch of unmanned vehicles purchased by SF Express can already operate in the city center of Jiayuguan. “This might be the best policy in the whole of Gansu.”
Currently, Liu Xing's four unmanned vehicles cover 35 surrounding courier stations and can handle about 3,500 orders per day. Although Xue Mei's four vehicles are only auxiliary to traditional vehicles, they account for 30% of the total order volume. She is planning to buy a few more unmanned vehicles of other brands. Zhou Weidong's next plan is to use unmanned vehicles to cover every village. He even wants to try drone delivery to meet the express delivery needs in some mountainous areas.
The unmanned delivery vehicles running in rural areas are starting to take over from manual delivery and become the main force of express delivery in northwest townships. Their convenient and efficient transportation methods and flexible delivery times are making up for the “last shortcoming” of e - commerce in the vast northwest region.
The Evolution of the E - commerce Underlying Ecosystem
One reason why unmanned delivery vehicles are perceived earlier in the northwest region is that this area has always been a major pain point for e - commerce. The vast territory with a sparse population and the scattered distribution of residential areas and production areas have led to a huge imbalance in inbound and outbound order volumes and high express delivery costs.
Liu Xing told us that if only considering the volume of express delivery orders, it is almost impossible to make a profit, and there is even a risk of being fined for failing to meet the assessment targets. For this reason, Liu Xing has also developed a “second growth curve” by engaging in e - commerce himself. He contracts production areas and purchases agricultural products from farmers to indirectly increase his outbound order volume and meet the assessment targets.
Logistics cost is a problem that almost all express delivery outlets in the northwest cannot avoid. Take the honeydew melons produced in a certain area as an example. Their weight often makes the express delivery fee almost as high as the price of the goods. This is also a bottleneck that e - commerce giants such as Pinduoduo, Cainiao, and JD.com cannot currently solve.
Judging from the current scale, unmanned vehicles certainly cannot completely solve this problem. However, from a trend perspective, unmanned vehicles are gradually improving many difficulties in the industry and establishing new connections among people, goods, and places in underdeveloped areas.
The most direct manifestation is the reduction of costs. For express delivery companies in the northwest, transportation costs and manual delivery costs are the two core expenditures. Xue Mei previously arranged two people to specifically deliver to rural courier stations. They were busy from morning until 6 p.m. to finish the deliveries. Now, only one person is needed to load the goods onto the unmanned vehicle. After the delivery, the station owner unloads the goods and puts them into the cabinets by himself.
Firstly, it saves the cost of one worker. The two drivers before have now been replaced by a female employee. This also brings new opportunities for housewives. There is a large steel factory in the local area. Most men work in the factory, and women can work for a few hours to earn some living expenses.
Secondly, it significantly reduces the expenditure on vehicle fuel. According to Xue Mei's estimate, her four unmanned vehicles can save nearly 300 yuan in fuel costs per day.
Cao Weimin was responsible for 15 courier stations. Previously, it took three people to make the deliveries, but now only one person is left. It means that one unmanned vehicle has replaced two workers. Especially for routes that are far away and have a small number of orders, only unmanned vehicles can be used for delivery now. This saves labor and “also relieves a lot of pressure on workers”.
Another improvement of unmanned delivery vehicles is the delivery time. “Unmanned vehicles won't go on strike. As long as they have power, they can run and can keep delivering until 10 p.m.” The farthest rural courier station from Xue Mei is more than 30 kilometers away. Previously, it would take until around 5 - 6 p.m. to deliver there by car. Now, the unmanned vehicle can arrive at 2 p.m., three or four hours earlier.
Liu Xing also said that the delivery frequency and efficiency have been significantly improved. Previously, some township courier stations had a small number of parcels, but a dedicated vehicle still had to be arranged for delivery. Now, unmanned vehicles are used. They deliver to the county in the morning and to the townships in the afternoon. Moreover, the vehicles often don't return empty. He will collect some goods on the way back and ask farmers to put them on the unmanned vehicle.
Overall, unmanned delivery vehicles achieve higher delivery efficiency with lower operating costs. The advantage is even more obvious, especially for high - frequency, low - unit - price orders. In addition, unmanned vehicles have also expanded the service boundary of e - commerce, upgrading the “last mile” to the “last dozens of miles”. In a situation where fulfillment ability is increasingly becoming the core competitiveness of e - commerce, the layout of unmanned delivery technology may become a new focus of competition.
The Next Battlefield
Judging from the situation in the northwest market, currently, it is basically a situation of “two - horse race” between Neolix and Jiushi Intelligence. According to the feedback from express delivery companies, both have their own advantages and disadvantages. When the prices are similar, the core concern of everyone is still the quality and user experience.
Liu Xing chose Jiushi because a colleague in another city had some problems during the trial use of Neolix vehicles due to the running - in process.
Cao Weimin felt that Neolix was a bit more user - friendly. He can monitor it in real - time on his mobile phone. “But the production speed is too slow. It only has one factory, while Jiushi has three.” Xue Mei originally ordered a fifth vehicle from Jiushi but later cancelled the order. “I want to try Neolix,” she said. Jiushi vehicles “stop and won't move forward” when there is an object in front, and the tires are not very good. Since she often has to change the tires, she now stocks them in batches of ten.
Battery life is a common problem for both Neolix and Jiushi, especially in cold winters when the battery life drops significantly. Although it is currently “sufficient”, express delivery companies still hope for a longer battery life, preferably being able to run for more than ten hours.
The current advantage of Neolix and Jiushi lies more in “seizing the early position”. Both have exceeded the “critical point” of 10,000 vehicles. Their focus of competition has also started to shift from technology to price. The frequent price cuts mentioned at the beginning of the article are just a microcosm of their current competition.
The competition in the unmanned delivery vehicle industry has obviously gone beyond this niche track itself and evolved into a comprehensive game among express delivery, e - commerce, and even the local lifestyle service industry. Large companies with the ability have already started to make arrangements and regard unmanned delivery vehicles as an important part of their ecosystem. Those that are temporarily not capable are binding themselves to new forces through cooperation or investment and don't want to miss out on this war.
A typical phenomenon is that many of the investors behind Neolix and Jiushi are also the “big customers” using their products. According to public information, Li Auto and SF Express are both shareholders of Neolix, and Ant Group stands behind Jiushi. In April this year, ZTO Express signed a cooperation agreement with Neolix and planned to jointly invest in 10,000 unmanned vehicles.
The “late - coming” large companies have more funds and stronger technological capabilities. Coupled with their determination in the field of unmanned delivery, they are now quickly narrowing the gap. In June this year, Cainiao's unmanned vehicles were officially mass - produced and have been operating on the roads in dozens of cities across the country. The cost per vehicle is only more than 10,000 yuan. By June this year, Meituan's unmanned delivery vehicles had completed more than 5 million orders of fresh food and groceries in Shenzhen. It is expected that the scale will exceed 1,000 units by the end of this year.
Among them, JD.com's and Meituan's unmanned vehicles are mainly for their own use, while Cainiao's unmanned vehicles have greater ambitions from the start, characterized by extensive external ecological cooperation. For example, in July this year, STO Express reached a strategic cooperation with Cainiao's unmanned vehicles to accelerate the large - scale application of unmanned delivery vehicles. Li Qiang, the CTO of Cainiao and the general manager of the unmanned vehicle project, said that it is expected that more than 200,000 unmanned vehicles will be deployed in the express delivery industry alone in the next three to five years. Cainiao hopes to dominate the future unmanned delivery market.
It should be noted that unmanned delivery vehicles are not a “one - off deal” but a multi - chain, long - term, and deeply - binding service. In this regard, e - commerce giants relying on platform ecosystems undoubtedly have greater innate advantages.
For example, Cainiao's unmanned vehicles can integrate various resources in the Alibaba ecosystem, including order data from Taobao and Tmall and the computing power and big data from Alibaba Cloud, to achieve more accurate order prediction and delivery route planning. JD.com's unmanned vehicles can be seamlessly connected with multiple links such as warehousing, sorting, and delivery to improve the efficiency of the entire supply chain. The algorithms that Meituan has accumulated from years of experience in the food delivery field are a dimensionality - reduction blow to the “new forces” in unmanned delivery.
Just as car companies develop intelligent driving and ride - hailing platforms develop Robotaxis, e - commerce players have significant genetic advantages in the field of unmanned delivery vehicles, including brand power and user trust far higher than other brands.
To truly increase the volume, the giants may only need to wait for the full “liberalization” of policies. However, for Neolix and Jiushi, this is undoubtedly a race against time. If they cannot “carve out their territories” as soon as possible and as much as possible, the subsequent competition will become increasingly difficult.