京东：雄安地下物流系统已开始架构规划– Tencent Tech
What happened: JD Logistics, the logistics unit of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, disclosed on Thursday that its underground logistics project in Xiong’an New Area is in the structure planning stage. The program was commissioned by the government of Xiong’an, a state-level new economic zone in China’s northern Hebei province. The system as planned will connect buildings and underground pipelines in order to deliver parcels to pick-up centers, which are assigned to customers. In real application scenarios, express parcels may be sent directly from the underground logistics channel to user doorsteps.
Why it’s important: China’s express delivery market has grown rapidly over the past few years, bolstered by various drivers such as a growing e-commerce market and increasing demand for service quality. However, the sector remains heavily dependent on human labor. Chinese tech companies have been engaged in increasing delivery efficiency by leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as autonomous driving, computer vision, and artificial intelligence (AI). The likes of JD.com, Alibaba, and Meituan-Dianping have rolled out their autonomous delivery vehicles and delivery drones. However, the underground logistics system is still in a very early stage of the application although it has its unique advantages in a higher degree of automation and proposes a solution to urban traffic problems.