China Autonomous Heavy Truck Industry Report 2022 Featuring 7 Chinese Autonomous Heavy Truck Solution Providers and 7 Autonomous Heavy Truck Layout of Chinese OEMs

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Dec 15, 2022, 14:30 ET

DUBLIN, Dec. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The "China Autonomous Heavy Truck Industry Report, 2022" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Autonomous heavy truck research: entering operation and pre-installed mass production stage, dimension reduction and cost decrease are the industry solution

`China Autonomous Heavy Truck Industry Report, 2022` combs through and summarizes R&D testing, product implementation and commercial operation of autonomous heavy trucks of current domestic leading autonomous driving solution providers and heavy truck OEMs.

AD heavy truck solution providers successively enter the actual operation and pre-installed mass production stage

The publisher also released a research report on autonomous heavy trucks in August 2021. At that time, most autonomous heavy truck-related companies were busy in pulling investment, looking for logistics and OEMs while promoting road testing and technology iterations.

On the one hand, the solution needs huge funds to maintain technology R&D and expand scale of test vehicles; on the other hand, they also expect their own technology to be implemented in OEMs and logistics fleets, and to really run on the road through a scaled fleet. By August 2022, the solution providers and OEMs are more advanced in autonomous/takeover-free testing and commercial operations, and the focus gradually shifts from R&D testing to actual operations and pre-installed mass production.

Autonomous/takeover-free testing

Starting in June 2021, the AD heavy truck solution providers gradually attempt to conduct autonomous or takeover-free public road testing for true real field autonomous/takeover-free technology validation. By August 2022, PlusAI, TuSimple, Pony.ai, etc. have all completed autonomous/takeover-free tests on public roads.

Among autonomous/takeover-free autonomous driving tests in the table above, TuSimple and Pony.ai are the most eye-catching.

According to the official statement, the fully autonomous test of TuSimple autonomous heavy truck on the public road took place at night, with no safety officers on duty or any human intervention throughout. The test was 80 miles long, including scenarios such as traffic signals, on and off ramps, emergency lane change vehicles and lane changes, and took 1 hour and 20 minutes.

The entire test was conducted in close cooperation with Arizona Department of Transportation and law enforcement, with three safety and security vehicles in front of and behind the test vehicle to ensure safety of fully autonomous test operation.

In April 2022, Pony.ai completed 6 hours of continuous, takeover-free autonomous driving tests in China's highway scenarios, going from night to day, through long tunnels, experiencing heavy rain and fog, and encountering real scenarios such as occupying accident cars, low-speed cars and special-shaped trailers. According to the official statement, in 6 hours, the driving distance exceeded 405 km, experienced 5 different highways and 13 tunnels, executed 4,235 turns, 1,052 accelerations/brakes, and tracked and recognized 4,806 dynamic traffic objects.

Commercial operations

With the deepening of cooperation with logistics providers, solution providers have begun to show their strengths in actual road freight, allowing autonomous heavy trucks to earn freight. Trunk Technology and Pony.ai have obtained road transport operation permits and built their own fleets for transportation. Public data shows that the accumulated mileage of road transportation by TuSimple, Inceptio Technology, Trunk Technology and other solution providers have reached million-kilometer level, of which it has reached the most leading 7 million miles (about 11 million kilometers) during 2020-2022H1.

Pre-installed mass production

For capital, solution providers or logistics providers, what they are most looking forward to is the mass production and implementation of autonomous heavy trucks. Thus, the vehicle function, technical certification, vehicle sales and after-sales service and other related responsible parties can carry out road transport business activities.

The US RAND has estimated that an autonomous driving system needs to be validated for at least 11 billion miles (17-18 billion km) to reach mass production conditions. With a heavy truck driving 2000km in 24 hours, it would take 100 heavy trucks to drive about 240 years without stopping.

To obtain enormous real road test mileage, the only solution is pre-installed mass production and scaling to the market. At this stage, except for TuSimple, which insists on mass production of L4 heavy trucks, most solution providers are targeting L3 heavy trucks for mass production. They hoped that with mass production of L3 heavy trucks, autonomous driving system will run in large quantities on actual roads, thus obtaining massive road data, feeding back autonomous driving system and eventually realizing L4 autonomous driving.

PlusAI and Inceptio Technology, which are at the forefront of mass production, have each cooperated with heavy truck OEMs to produce L3 heavy trucks in late 2021 and have achieved some delivery results. In August 2022, PlusAI delivered five L3 FAW Jiefang J7 to its partner Rokin Logistics (with a total order of 100 vehicles, and the remaining 95 vehicles will be delivered within two years).

Key Topics Covered:

1 Overview of Autonomous Heavy Truck Industry
1.1 Overview of Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.1.1 Classification of Trucks
1.1.2 Necessity of Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.1.3 Advantages of Automated Driving Technology for Autonomous Heavy Trucks
1.1.4 Levels of Autonomous Heavy Trucks
1.1.5 Functional Characteristics of Autonomous Heavy Trucks at Different Levels
1.2 Truck Autonomous Driving Technologies
1.2.1 Typical Application Scenarios and Technologies of Autonomous Truck
1.2.2 Typical Application Scenarios and Technical Solutions of Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.2.3 Key Technologies Needed by Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.2.4 Reference Architecture of Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.2.5 Evolution Route of Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.3 Truck Platooning
1.3.1 Overview of Truck Platooning
1.3.2 Development Course of Truck Platooning Technology
1.3.3 Key Components of Truck Platooning and Their Functions
1.3.4 System Architecture of Tuck Platooning Operation
1.3.5 Value of Truck Platooning
1.3.6 Truck Platooning Validation and Test in China
1.4 Regulations on Autonomous Heavy Truck
1.4.1 Related Policies on Autonomous Heavy Truck in China--National level
1.4.2 Related Policies on Autonomous Heavy Truck in China--Local level
1.4.3 Development Roadmap of Autonomous Truck in China
1.5 Challenges in Autonomous Truck and Ancillary Facilities
1.5.1 Challenges
1.5.2 Ancillary Facilities

2. Chinese Autonomous Heavy Truck Solution Providers
2.1 TuSimple: Highway + Port
2.2 PlusAI: Highway
2.3 Inceptio Technology: Highway
2.4 Trunk Technology: Port + Highway
2.5 Hong Jing Drive: Highway
2.6 Pony.ai
2.7 Autra.tech: Profile, Equity Structure, Financing
2.8 Summary of Domestic Solution Providers

3. Autonomous Heavy Truck Layout of Chinese OEMs
3.1 Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle
3.2 FAW Group (FAW Jiefang/Zhito Technology)
3.3 SAIC Motor (UTOPILOT)
3.4 Shaanxi Automobile Group (Shaanxi Heavy Duty Truck/Dechuang Future)
3.5 Foton Motor
3.6 Sinotruk
3.7 BEIBEN Trucks
3.8 Summary of Domestic OEMs