In a community in Lukou, Nanjing under the epidemic, residents were automatically forbidden to stay at home, and several unmanned distribution vehicles from meituan shuttled back and forth, providing material transportation support for key prevention and control areas.

It is reported that the unmanned vehicle implements full-automatic and contactless distribution. About 20 daily necessities such as rice, flour, oil, fruits and vegetables are distributed by a single vehicle each time, which can solve the daily necessities of 10 households a day, and each vehicle can distribute about 380 orders a day at most.

Seeing the scene of unmanned car delivery, Bao Xiaobian is really worried as a member of the packaging industry!

After the distribution of the unmanned vehicle, the electricity supplier will take the circulation and plastic box + unmanned vehicle logistics distribution mode, while the traditional manual delivery of express carton, plastic bags, foam boxes, waybills, tapes, filling materials and other packaging materials will be significantly reduced.

Someone vs nobody

According to the latest data of the State Post Office in July this year, the daily national express package volume has exceeded 300 million. Based on the growth rate of China's express business in recent years, by 2025, China's express business will reach 134.9 billion pieces, with an annual compound growth rate of 13.4%. At that time, the potential demand for paper express packaging will increase by 16.59 billion pieces.

However, behind the prosperity of express packaging, it needs to pay high environmental and social costs. Previous reports estimated that according to the current growth rate of the express industry, the carbon emission of the express industry will exceed 32 million tons. By 2025, the generation of express packaging waste in China will reach 21.6 million tons, the treatment cost will reach more than 3 billion yuan, and the landfill disposal capacity will exceed 1 million tons.

A few years ago, rookie and JD logistics successively launched the "carton recycling plan". However, after several years of operation, the effect is not satisfactory.

Take Jingdong as an example, according to the data released by Jingdong in July 28th, as of the end of 2020, Jingdong had accumulated more than 1600 times of circular express boxes, with a total reduction of 180 million disposable foam boxes. This magnitude is basically negligible compared with the 10 billion express volume of JD logistics every year. Obviously, the return plan has long been a chicken rib.

Various signs show that unmanned vehicle distribution is being accelerated by major e-commerce platforms.

In May this year, Beijing high-level automatic driving demonstration zone issued the implementation rules for the management of unmanned distribution vehicles to explore the innovation of application policies for specific scenarios. At the same time, it also issued road qualification for the first batch of unmanned distribution vehicle enterprises Jingdong, meituan and Neolithic.

In April this year, meituan launched a new generation of unmanned distribution vehicle "magic bag 20", which provides manufacturing services for this unmanned distribution vehicle with L4 level automatic driving ability. According to statistics, meituan unmanned delivery vehicles have delivered more than 35000 real orders in Shunyi, Beijing, with a cumulative automatic driving mileage of nearly 300000 kilometers.

According to the news of rookie post station, in March this year, Alibaba logistics unmanned car entered the rookie post station of 15 colleges and universities across the country to help college teachers and students get express better and faster at the last 100 meters of express. In Wuhan, the "First University Express City" in China, unmanned cars have been stationed in three universities such as central China Normal University to deliver packages from the rookie post station to the dormitory building.

Jingdong has made experimental deployment with unmanned distribution vehicles cooperating with Xingshen intelligence, Luobu technology, zhiwalker and Gaoshen Zhitu. According to the data of JD logistics, during the whole 618 period of this year, the service volume of JD Logistics Intelligent express truck increased by more than 24 times year-on-year. Jingdong Logistics Intelligent express vehicles can be seen on the open roads of more than 20 cities in China such as Beijing, Tianjin and Changshu and on the campuses of nearly 100 colleges and universities.

Ma Yun said that it is difficult for any tuyere to be popular for three years. As a tuyere that has been popular for nearly ten years, express packaging has ushered in severe challenges for the first time.