Greater than 160 years after the legendary Pony Categorical supply service accomplished its first route, a brand new technology of “Pony”-emblazoned autos are taking an AI-powered method to long-haul supply.
Autonomous driving firm Pony.ai introduced at this time a partnership with SANY Heavy Truck (SANY), China’s largest heavy gear producer, to collectively develop level 4 autonomous vans. The autos will run on the Pony.ai autonomous driving controller (ADC), constructed on NVIDIA DRIVE Orin.
The three way partnership plans to supply a combined fleet of latest power and inner combustion engine autos, with the objective of accelerating the share of different powertrains over time.
Lengthy-haul vans play an important position within the international financial system. Around the globe, corporations delivered a complete of 257 billion packages in 2021 — a quantity anticipated to almost double in 4 years, in accordance with Guidehouse consultancy.
The addressable marketplace for trucking is substantial. In 2021 alone, heavy truck gross sales in China exceeded 1.3 million items, the China Affiliation of Vehicle Producers reported.
On the identical time, persistent employee shortages are placing strain on the trade, with drivers making up 25-30% of the entire value of long-haul trucking.
Firms are starting to show towards autonomous vans to assist ease these bottlenecks — Guidehouse estimates that, by 2032, greater than 1.2 million automated vans and buses might be deployed worldwide every year, with greater than half of these autos working in China.
Pony.ai and SANY are working to ship automated options even sooner, with small-scale deliveries starting this yr, and mass manufacturing deliberate for 2024. Inside a number of years, the enterprise will attain an annual manufacturing of round 10,000 vans.
From Horsepower to AI Energy
The brand new three way partnership is ready to obtain near-term deployment by constructing these autonomous vans on the high-performance, automotive-grade NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip.
In June, Pony.ai unveiled its latest generation ADC, designed for the low-latency and real-time deep neural community (DNN) efficiency crucial for protected autonomous driving. The AV platform consists of each single and twin DRIVE Orin configurations, reaching 254 and 508 trillion operations per second (TOPS), respectively.
As a software-defined compute platform, DRIVE Orin is designed to deal with giant numbers of functions and DNNs concurrently, whereas reaching systematic security requirements, to make sure protected, extremely superior clever driving.
With DRIVE Orin, Pony.ai and SANY’s autonomous vans can seamlessly deal with the calls for of long-haul delivery, operating across the clock.
Working Collectively for Extra Clever Supply
Collaboration is a key driver behind deploying autonomous autos within the brief time period.
Along with working with SANY, Pony.ai just lately fashioned a three way partnership with logistics platform provider Sinotrans, one of many largest logistics corporations in China, to develop an clever logistics community.
By combining good fleet administration with software-defined autos, these joint ventures are poised to revolutionize supply, creating a robust customary and framework for future improvement within the trade.
And with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin on the core, these fleets are redefining horsepower for the lengthy haul.
