Collected some materials about low-altitude economy and related industry applications, mainly including Meituan’s trial of drone delivery in Shenzhen. I don’t know how to analyze the impact of drone deployment in the delivery industry on the movement of commercial capital. Below are the materials.
About “Low-Altitude Economy”
In February 2021, the low-altitude economy was incorporated into the “National Integrated Three-Dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline.” At the Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year, it was proposed to “build several strategic emerging industries such as biomanufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy.” This year’s National Two Sessions, “actively creating new growth engines such as biomanufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy,” was included in the government work report.
The “low-altitude economy” is a comprehensive economic form centered on low-altitude flight activities, composed of new productive forces such as unmanned aerial vehicles and low-altitude intelligent networking, interacting with elements like airspace and markets, driving the development of low-altitude infrastructure, low-altitude aircraft manufacturing, low-altitude operation services, and low-altitude flight support.
Currently, there is no unified standard definition for “low-altitude economy,” but from various policy documents issued, its core lies in transforming low-altitude natural resources into economic resources.
About Meituan Drone Delivery in Shenzhen
Guangdong is one of the provinces in China that started developing the low-altitude economy earlier. This year’s Guangdong provincial government work report proposed to innovate city air transportation, emergency rescue, logistics, and transportation application scenarios, and accelerate the construction of a low-altitude unmanned sensing industry system. On February 1, the “Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Low-Altitude Economy Industry Promotion Regulations” officially came into effect, becoming the first local special regulation on low-altitude economy nationwide.
On July 5, Meituan released its fourth-generation drone model and a brand-new urban low-altitude logistics solution, aiming to provide users with more efficient and convenient delivery services.
According to Meituan, this model was developed over more than two years and is a new multi-rotor drone focused on urban low-altitude logistics delivery scenarios. Delivery within a 3-kilometer radius generally takes no more than 15 minutes. To improve user experience, this generation of drones has significantly enhanced safety, economy, environmental adaptability, and operational friendliness.
Drones will serve as an important supplement to regional transportation capacity, cooperating with delivery personnel to complete daily delivery tasks. Mao Nian told Pengpai Technology that currently, the cost of the drone industry is gradually decreasing, approaching that of manual labor, but drones will not affect or replace the work of delivery personnel.
Firstly, the delivery economy is growing rapidly with high demand. Taking Meituan’s main business of food delivery as an example, according to its 2022 annual financial report, Meituan’s food delivery business continued to perform steadily, user stickiness continued to increase, with peak daily orders exceeding 60 million, and the average annual transaction per user reaching 40.8, a year-on-year increase of 14%.
Secondly, drone delivery can accelerate the work efficiency of delivery personnel, reducing traffic congestion and waiting times. Drone flight paths will be integrated into Meituan’s delivery network, and orders will be dispatched through a hybrid system, enabling coordinated work between drones and riders. During the scope of drone delivery services and operating hours, when a user places an order for delivery by drone, the intelligent dispatch system will analyze and calculate based on real-time order data, assigning orders with high difficulty or urgent time requirements to drones. Moreover, even with full city deployment, drone delivery will not exceed 10% of total orders, mainly used in special scenarios and peak hours.
Meituan’s process of operating drone delivery in Shenzhen is not simply “door-to-door” delivery, but involves riders first picking up food from merchants, then delivering it to the drone takeoff station where staff bind it, and finally flying to the drone smart air-drop cabinet, from which customers need to retrieve their food themselves.
In fact, the so-called “15-minute delivery within 3 kilometers” is mainly because small drones have a battery endurance of less than half an hour at most, and this will decrease further as the battery wears out. Additionally, since the maximum payload does not exceed 2.5kg and the volume of the air-drop cabinet is small, there are significant limitations on the items that can be delivered.
As a tool to “accelerate the work efficiency of delivery personnel,” does drone deployment in the goods flow process increase the speed of capital turnover? Some complex terrains are replaced by drones, which seemingly reduces labor complexity, but in reality, it indirectly increases the workload of riders, who are expected to travel more urgently along carefully planned routes by capitalists. These capitalists, unwilling to see profit margins decline due to increased organizational complexity, exploit riders harshly.
“We developed a drone spatiotemporal capsule, which is a virtual existence. But because of it, drones no longer have the possibility of collision. The backend staff can also see the status of each drone in real-time and accurately, whether it is cruising, taking off online, or abnormal.” However, due to the abnormal concentration of capital and the frantic pursuit of monopoly rents by the bourgeoisie, urban planning is extremely unreasonable. In large cities, on one side are many dirty, chaotic, and illegally wired urban villages, and on the other side are towering residential and commercial buildings. Even after spending huge human and financial resources to plan a relatively reasonable drone flight route, it is ultimately difficult to promote.
The above image’s red part is the “spatiotemporal capsule.”
Furthermore, when I searched for the keyword “drone” on Voice of America, almost all results were about military applications, whereas on Chinese networks, posts promoting low-altitude economy development are prevalent, with a “bright future” that is actually more about cover-up. DJI Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen once stated, “We have never designed or manufactured products or equipment for military purposes. We have never promoted or sold our products for military conflicts or wars in any country.” In reality, China’s military industry has been aggressively selling DJI drones as war machines during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. When the Russian embassy in China praised this, the evidence was quickly removed, exposing the crime.
