From November 22 to 23, 2022, the 12th Asian Logistics, Maritime and Aviation Conference (ALMAC) was successfully held in Hong Kong, China. As an international artificial intelligence company with full-stack development capability, Westwell made its first appearance at the exhibition, primarily to share its green and intelligent innovation achievements in the field of container-based logistics and to discuss the creation of a global resilient logistics chain with users and industry partners.

ALMAC, organized by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, is themed "Achieving Sustainable Supply Chains: Connectivity, Collaboration, Innovation". It primarily explores how to establish inter-industry connections, foster collaboration, and drive innovation to achieve sustainability and global trade growth. This edition of ALMAC was also a key event of the "Hong Kong Maritime Week 2022," a week-long series of events promoting Hong Kong's maritime service advantages worldwide and enhancing public understanding of the economic benefits brought by the maritime and port industries to Hong Kong.

In the past two years, the global shipping industry has faced unprecedented challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions in global supply chains, inflationary pressures, slowing growth, and sustainability issues. These challenges have highlighted vulnerabilities in industry, supply, and logistic chains. Consequently, ensuring the smooth operation of international logistics and safeguarding the global supply chain system have become common global objectives.

As a first-time exhibitor at ALMAC, Westwell showcased its flagship autonomous driving intelligent commercial vehicle, the Q-Truck, providing an in-depth presentation on commercial applications of artificial intelligence and autonomous driving technology across the entire logistics industry chain. The demonstration attracted many industry customers from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and other regions for consultations.

Q-Truck has been commercialized at ports such as Hutchison Port, Thailand's Laem Chabang Port, CSP Abu Dhabi Khalifa Port among others. In October 2022, the second batch of Q-Truck arrived successfully at Laem Chabang Port, continuing to assist in the digital transformation of Thai ports and becoming an essential link in building a local smart supply chain.

Terminal D of Laem Chabang Port is part of the "Thailand 4.0" national strategy's intelligent upgrading projects. In collaboration with Hutchison Port, Westwell spearheads AI development in global ports and wholly oversees the automation construction project of Terminal D's autonomous driving. This project is the world's first mixed operation project of autonomous and manned driving vehicles, the only normal operation scenario of an autonomous driving truck without safety personnel at present, and the first autonomous driving truck project supporting independent operation of users in the world. Since April 2020, the Q-Truck autonomous driving fleet has been operating at Thai terminals for 30 months in total, demonstrating a steady rise in operation efficiency on shore, successfully nearing the level of manned driving efficiency while maintaining stability, and completing operations with over 180,000 TEU containers in total.

In 2021, the Abu Dhabi COSCO Khalifa Port Phase II Terminal's autonomous driving project was officially set in motion. With Q-Truck's assistance, the port became the first in the Middle East to deploy autonomous driving vehicles. Up until now, a stunning milestone of 4 million safe working hours has been accomplished. Additionally, in the second half of 2020, the project contract was finalized, marking the world's first introduction of the "agent operation" model for commercial autonomous driving trucks.

Constructing intelligent and green ports is a significant global trend in the port industry's development. Addressing issues such as large battery capacity and slow charging for commercial vehicles, Westwell introduced the Intelligent Battery Swap version of the Q-Truck in early 2022. This version autonomously completes a battery replacement in about 5 minutes, greatly enhancing battery efficiency and significantly reducing a car's lifecycle carbon emissions. The current energy consumption of a single Q-Truck is 2.6 kWh/km, reducing approximately 8 tons of CO2 emissions annually, the equivalent of planting over 900 trees each year.

Westwell steers its market-focused efforts through artificial intelligence technology and autonomic driving to advance the digitization of production factors in the global logistics field and urban life elements. The "intelligent" and "green" strategy safeguards the industry's green development and contributes to the global logistics industry's upgrading. So far, our intelligent driving products, represented by the Q-Truck, have been operational in hundreds of locations globally. By actively integrating into the global industrial chain of the digital economy, Westwell remains fully committed to promoting intelligent innovation and sustainable green development in global container logistics.

With the grand stage provided by the Asian Logistics Maritime and Air Cargo Conference, Westwell looks forward to collaborating with more users and ecosystem partners in the logistics field. Collectively, they aim to build a more resilient and reliable logistics supply chain service network, ensuring the smooth and sustainable operation of global supply chains.