Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Original title: "will takeout riders disappear?" "

If the future of technology does not lead to human wealth, liberation and freedom, then technology is worthless.

In this issue, let's do a thinking experiment:

Can drones replace takeout riders or not? What is the underlying paradox of unmanned distribution?

Let's first come to the conclusion that, in fact, there are two development paths for unmanned distribution.

First, directly fill the labor gap, replace manpower, and develop unmanned transport capacity.

The second is to use machines to improve and optimize the efficiency of manpower distribution.

Of the two, man-machine cooperation is the right way for the development of unmanned distribution. If the goal is only to replace manpower and reduce costs, then the real realization of unmanned distribution will be a long way off.

In fact, the reason why unmanned distribution has not been popularized for a long time, the immature technology is only one aspect, and there are three real core issues:

1. The business model is not clear

two。 Security issues behind complex policy restrictions

3. The technical challenge is enormous.

01 Let's start with the first question.

The business model is not clear, in simpler terms-the accounts cannot be calculated.

Those who know about the hardware field all know that most of the time they want to replace manpower with hardware, thinking that they can save money, but if you do the accounting, you will know that the ideal is very plump and realistic and very skinny.

Take the unmanned car, for example, the unmanned distribution vehicle made by Arida Moore is called the Little Barbarian Donkey. This kind of product is chosen according to the technical ability and scheme of the enterprise, and the price is much different. The high one is 500000, and the low one can do 20 to 250000.

Ali claims that the cost is 1/3 of the industry average, although I do not know how credible this statement is, but even if its cost is only 150000, the price is not cheap.

After all, the lidar on the unmanned car alone costs thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for a better one. And there is often more than one car to use.

Then the courier company sends a single express delivery, how much is the revenue? It's about a few cents to more than one yuan.

The rest is a very simple math problem. If you take an unmanned car for express delivery, how many orders will it take to get back to the cost? At least hundreds of thousands of orders.

If you send takeout, a little better, an order of takeout, if the platform can earn 6 yuan, then a car to send a 10, 000 or 20, 000, almost can also get back to the cost.

By the way, a takeout rider can deliver an average of about 40 orders a day.

The situation of drones is similar. With reference to the price of DJI industry aircraft, the cost of drones currently used by several giants is about tens of thousands of yuan, which also means that an aircraft has to send tens of thousands of couriers and takeout to get back the cost.

This does not take into account the labor costs.

Yes, there are labor costs for unmanned distribution.

The reason is still due to technological instability. According to the country's regulatory requirements for new technology, unmanned vehicles need to be followed by a security guard when delivering express deliveries and takeout, and drones cannot fly beyond people's field of vision.

So this thing still needs to pick up a babysitter, and the babysitter's salary has to be included in the cost.

This is only the cost of the product and the operating process itself, not including the huge cost of R & D iterations and the cost of supporting a large R & D team.

It is true that not every enterprise can bear the financial pressure.

02 the second is the issue of regulation.

In fact, regulators are under greater pressure in the face of new technologies.

After all, most of the time, enterprises only need to consider the input-output ratio, and all the technology, products and operations can be attributed to the problem of money in the end. If you don't make money, you can only withdraw.

But regulators need to consider all the external implications of new technologies and new business forms. We should consider not only social benefits, but also risks and hazards.

Imagine you're walking down the road with a drone coming down from the sky, carrying takeout, carrying a few kilos, and the blades spinning fast. With a crash, you will have red and white, zero and whole.

Are you surprised? are you surprised?

This is why regulators in China, the US and Europe are very cautious about unmanned distribution. If the unmanned distribution falls to the ground on a large scale, in case there is a big BUG, it will be a crash and everything will die.

Therefore, in order to guard against risks, regulators will ask a series of questions to companies, including, but not limited to:

How to ensure that unmanned vehicles and drones will not be hijacked in the process of distribution?

How does the device ensure that it does not invade the user's privacy when collecting information for the visual algorithm?

How to ensure that the information collected by the equipment will not be illegally used and stolen?

However, no matter how stringent the requirements are, it cannot take care of all the actual situation.

Many people will think that regulators should actually take the initiative to introduce rules to standardize the industry.

But the problem is that if unmanned distribution is not put into the actual large-scale operation, whether enterprises or regulators, it is difficult to put forward a reasonable rules and standards. After all, regulators are also people, not prophets.

However, without reasonable rules, it is also difficult for regulators to issue licenses so that enterprises can operate legally and in compliance.

This is a chicken-and-egg problem.

What to do, we can only discuss how to come. Let's take a small step and slow down the technical landing. The key is not to pull the eggs.

03 the last is the problem of technical difficulty.

In my opinion, it is not suitable for Internet companies to do unmanned distribution in terms of corporate culture.

What do Internet companies like to do? They like to invade like fire, like to fight high and expand rapidly, and if they can't make up their minds, they can do an ABtest to solve it.

But doing unmanned distribution technology is a slow worker who can do fine work, and the software and hardware system is closely linked to the operation system.

If the business model is chosen wrong, the technological path may be wrong. So that a large number of technology accumulation and cost investment into a basket of water.

Technically speaking, the delivery of takeout staff is actually a complex decision scene, including planning, perception, obstacle avoidance, navigation and so on. Each part has many technical problems abstracted from the real scene that must be solved.

The simplest, what to do if the takeout car is hit, what to do when there is a traffic jam, how to meet the extreme weather, and what to do when you encounter the complex electromagnetic environment in the city?

Last year there was a famous article called "takeout riders trapped in the system". There was a saying in it that impressed me very much.

In reality, if you want to smash the best plan of the system, a heavy rain is enough.

Can unmanned distribution really deal with complex problems that are difficult to deal with by manpower? It's very blue.

04 now, to what extent have unmanned distribution at home and abroad been carried out?

Those who are relatively ahead in China are Ali, JD.com, Meituan and Shunfeng. They have their own logistics and distribution business, and it is only natural to do unmanned distribution.

However, what these companies have in common is that their unmanned distribution is mainly in the press release.

As for practical applications, it can only be said that talk is better than nothing.

In addition to Meituan is a bit stronger, there is a real order of more than 2000, most of the apps seem to have landed, but not completely.

And the giants within the company, most of the attitude and commitment to unmanned distribution are still in a state of wavering.

Everyone knows that this thing is the future, but they don't know how the future will come and whether they should all in or not.

So I often see the news about the departure of the team leader and the adjustment of the organizational structure. Behind these news is the entanglement of big companies.

As for Europe and the United States, they have actually gone a little further than at home.

As giants, Amazon and Google have launched their own unmanned distribution services one after another. It's just that nine years after Amazon's high-profile announcement of the drone program, there has been no business online; drones are on the road, but they look like twin brothers.

Google claims to have completed the delivery of 200,000 orders, but there is no official charge for these 200,000 orders. We can only say that people have the ability to make money, so they don't have to care too much about the business model.

Compared with the weak giants, small overseas startups are more able to fight.

For example, Starship, which does campus car distribution, and Nuro, a startup that has been licensed to hit the road in the United States and has partnered with Wal-Mart and other giants.

Starship Why can Europe and the United States go far in unmanned distribution?

In addition to starting early, these startups have a clear idea of business logic.

In fact, because of the high labor cost, the real-time distribution market in Europe and the United States, that is, the flash delivery market for takeout, cannot be said to be blank, but it is not much better than the blank.

The European and American markets need to complete the earliest development of the real-time distribution market through drones and drones.

Because of the weak foundation and poor foundation in the past, there is no need to worry about the fact that the ratio of performance to price is lower than that of manual transportation. In the development of a new business model, the constraints will be smaller.

And the characteristics of European and American markets are actually more suitable for the development of unmanned distribution.

The urban form of Europe and America has obvious characteristics of counter-urbanization. There is a spatial mismatch between the high spending power people living in the suburbs and a large number of businesses in the center of the town.

Coupled with the fact that many cities in Europe and the United States are sparsely populated, it is difficult to balance this mismatch with manpower, and it is also difficult to optimize a reasonable economic model on the basis of labor costs.

So unmanned distribution vehicles that can patrol the community and drones that can fly over a distance of 10 kilometers in 6 minutes is the possibility of a fast and economical real-time distribution market for European and American markets.

But in China, the logic is different.

First of all, the motivation of the domestic giants to do this is not so pure.

In the past few years, Internet companies have eaten up the dividends of "model innovation". Now that 20 years of Internet prosperity has come to an end, giants urgently need to use real technological innovation to correct their identity as "high-tech enterprises".

This is a subjective motivation to build its own legitimacy.

On the other hand, China's Internet penetration has basically come to an end, and no matter it is the sinking market, the aging market or the primary-age market, no new story can be told.

They need to make technological breakthroughs, replace manpower with machines, or, more bluntly, improve their profit margins by means of "hardware dilution costs".

In particular, such as Ali, JD.com, Meituan and other enterprises doing online and offline interconnection, that is, commonly known as O2O business, is even more so.

Objectively speaking, this is a business decision made by the pressure of enterprise operation.

It can be said that the significance of this business in public relations and finance is greater than the temptation of the business itself.

05 back to the unmanned distribution business itself. As we all know, the density of Chinese cities is very high, and the higher the density is to the city center, there is no space mismatch problem of "counter-urbanization". At present, manual delivery is already a relatively mature solution.

So, does it mean that unmanned distribution is a fake demand? Not exactly.

Because of the high density, what the Chinese market has to solve is not the problem of European and American markets from 0 to 1, but how to improve the efficiency of labor distribution, from 80 to 100 points.

At the beginning, we came to the conclusion that man-machine cooperation is the right way for the development of unmanned distribution.

The man-machine cooperation here means to let the UAV assist the dispatcher to better complete the distribution.

For example, manual delivery can be delivered directly to your door, but drone delivery can not enter the building, nor can it enter the balcony for technical and security reasons. It can only take a fixed route and land on a specific takeout cabinet. Consumers go downstairs to pick it up.

This takeout cabinet is also specially customized. at present, there may be only one or two in each community.

Such being the case, is there a possibility to improve the carrying capacity of drones and let drones take a fixed route to become the main artery in takeout distribution? The takeout staff, as capillaries, are only responsible for the distribution of the last kilometer.

The combination of trunk lines and branch lines, on the one hand, ensures the quality of distribution, but also improves the efficiency of distribution, and most importantly, if takeout workers do not have to cycle around the city, it will also greatly improve their work safety.

To take another example, for example, around the Spring Festival, a large number of takeout workers return home, and takeout orders are often left unanswered. At such a specific time, there will be a gap in transport capacity. Then through drones to improve the efficiency of takeout staff, to ensure that when the transport capacity is insufficient, it can also ensure basic services.

There's another example. When we transport dispatches in the same city, flash is often the first choice. Flash is expensive and requires more time, so whether there is a possibility that drones that will not be affected by road traffic are more suitable to improve flash efficiency.

Combined with the mode of the trunk branch line in front, the flash messengers only need to provide the service of the last kilometer in the area to which they belong, without the need for the whole city to run, the familiarity with the territory will be higher, and the distribution efficiency can also be guaranteed.

Among these possible modes, there are both human factors and the assistance of drones in order to form a man-machine cooperative distribution system.

And compared with the pure replacement of manpower, man-machine cooperation has lower requirements for technology, and the technology is easier to land.

06 but in the end, I still want to talk about a more essential topic: what is the problem that technology is really worth solving?

In my opinion, today's ubiquitous same-day delivery service, next-day delivery service and half-hour delivery service are really efficient and comfortable to use.

But do we really need to consume and trade more efficiently? Or, more intuitively, can I get my takeout more quickly? is it really a problem worth investing huge social resources to solve?

Just like we do application problems when we are young, the investment and research and development of an abstract cutting-edge technology can also fall into a specific and landing application scenario.

The above-mentioned technical challenges of unmanned distribution end up with the application problem of "how can we make express delivery and takeout be delivered to us more quickly from restaurants, supermarkets and warehouses?"

But apart from getting our takeout faster, are there any other application questions that deserve our attention?

For example, how to do the digital transformation of the factory, so as to optimize our production capacity, and even how to improve the delivery experience of takeout workers, so that they can complete their work in a more secure situation.

At the social level, are these issues more worthy of human and material resources to solve?

And the reason why we have the question of "whether drones and unmanned vehicles are going to grab the jobs of takeout workers" is also from the perspective of social universal values. it is difficult for us to see the value of such investment as "improving delivery speed through robots" to the whole society.

To put it bluntly, now the distribution is very fast, and then to spend more cost, just to improve the distribution speed of three or five minutes, it is no longer meaningful.

Anthropologist David Graber put forward the concept of "shit work" in his book Bullshit Jobs, which refers to a job that lacks a sense of meaning.

David Graber's lack of meaning here can not only refer to a job's lack of positive social value, but also mean that it can not provide workers with meaning other than labor remuneration, or even damage their physical and mental health.

When this concept is widely discussed in China, takeout distributors are often mentioned.

Although the social value of takeout workers is irreplaceable, for them, this is a job that lacks channels to rise, lacks personal growth, is not low in danger, and has to be systematically squeezed.

And all this is rationalized by the "takeout rider's monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan".

In my opinion, compared with continuing to improve the efficiency of takeout workers, how to ensure their safety, improve their work experience, and give them channels for career development and promotion is what Internet companies need to think about, and it is also the direction of technological development in the future.

In fact, shit work has never been a low-paying job, but a career, with real social value, has never been just about providing a large number of jobs. But to provide a dignified and future way of life.

If the future of technology does not lead to human wealth, liberation and freedom, then technology is worthless.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: IC Lab (ID:InsightPlusClub)

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