Hesai Partners with Meituan for Autonomous Delivery

2021-12-31

On December 31, 2021, Hesai, the world's leading lidar company, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with food delivery giant Meituan. According to the agreement, Hesai will provide Meituan with high-performance lidar sensors that cover various ranges, empowering Meituan’s deployment of autonomous delivery vehicles in the next four years.

In the third quarter of 2021, Meituan's average daily delivery volume reached 43.6 million, revealing a glimpse of the tremendous market potential that autonomous delivery industry holds. According to McKinsey’s forecast, 80% of deliveries in the next ten years will become automated. The business model for autonomous delivery has matured and the industry is entering the chapter of large-scale commercial applications.

Meituan's autonomous delivery plans to cover 2,800 cities, including mountainous areas with harsh climates. This presents a tough challenge for technical suitability and hardware reliability.

Meituan had already started autonomous delivery project back in 2016 to explore the applications for autonomous logistics. As of September 2021, Meituan operates 100 autonomous delivery vehicles that have delivered over 100,000 orders.

Meituan’s newest generation of autonomous delivery vehicle, “MagicBag20”, is equipped with Hesai’s Pandar series long-range lidar and XT series medium-range lidar. The combination of long and short range lidars provides a 360-degree FOV sensing solution that eliminates all blind spots. With the support of reliable sensors and advanced algorithms, “MagicBag20” will be able to operate stably under various settings.

Hesai's Pandar series lidar
Hesai’s XT series lidar

As technology advances, Hesai believes the ultimate form for lidar is the combination of chip, high-performance transmit-receiver modules, and reliable scanning method. After 4 years of research and development, Hesai’s proprietary ASIC technology enables high lidar performance while also reducing cost, opening up the possibility for lidar’s mass-production.

Correspondingly, Meituan autonomous delivery vehicle’s sensing hardware will continue to upgrade with each new iteration of Hesai lidar, enabling a more efficient, more competitive distribution service that can operate efficiently under numerous delivery settings.

Li Yifan, co-founder and CEO of Hesai said:

“As a leader for e-commerce, Meituan is leading the industry to first achieve large-scale operation for autonomous delivery. Hesai will continuously provide Meituan with advanced lidar to better assist their autonomous delivery vehicles, making people’s everyday life more comfortable and efficient.”

Xia Huaxia, Meituan’s vice president and general manager of autonomous delivery department, said:

“Hesai lidars have deeply influenced the global autonomous driving industry. We believe this in-depth cooperation with Hesai will help our autonomous delivery vehicles to safely enter large-scale deployment. Through technological innovations made by the two companies, Maituan services will increase the efficiency of a combined digital and physical world.”

About Meituan Autonomous Delivery

Meituan autonomous delivery combines the complex logistics network around Meituan’s offline settings. Using logistics network, delivery mode and intelligent delivery terminal to form the overall solution for Meituan autonomous delivery. Meituan autonomous delivery solution takes advantage of different products such as drones and autonomous delivery vehicles to meet the needs of instant delivery in different settings, including parks, open roads and low altitudes. Meituan strives to improve delivery efficiency and user experience, and ultimately achieve "automatic delivery that reaches every corner of the world".

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