60 Seconds with… Maya Xiao, Senior Analyst at Interact Analysis

Maya Xiao

Interact Analysis

Title: Senior Analyst

Location: Shanghai, China

Experience: Five years as an analyst at Interact Analysis, where she covers the lift truck industry and automation, including industrial robots.

Modern: Maya, how has the lift truck industry performed over the last year?

Xiao: I started tracking the lift truck market in 2018, and my first report was in 2020. Since then, the market has been growing fast, especially in the Class 2 and Class 3 segments.

Modern: What do you think is driving the industry today?

Xiao: Although I divide the market into manufacturing and distribution, if you look at it in general, it’s the growth of e-commerce, labor shortages and the increasing cost of labor. And in the market for electric trucks, it’s the need for zero emissions indoor and even outdoors at the ports.

Modern: Lift trucks are a mature technology, but are there technological changes you’re following?

Xiao: There are two: The first is the electrification of vehicles and the second is autonomy. There is the replacement of ICE batteries with lithium and hydrogen fuel cells. Battery prices will continue to decrease, but more importantly are environmental policies coming out of Europe and the APAC regions. As to autonomy, forklifts are one link in warehouse automation. In North America, we’re already seeing some fully automated, connected warehouses, and in APAC, it’s coming.

Modern: Lift trucks are entering the automation space. What’s the state of that technology?

Xiao: It’s still in the emerging or trial stage, where a typical project is just five or 10 vehicles. Right now, you can’t just copy and paste autonomous lift trucks into your warehouse. But, it’s maturing, and I think 2025 will be a turning point as more of the early pioneers gain experience.

Modern: Do you think the trajectory of growth for autonomous lift trucks will be like what we saw with AMRs? In that market, DHL began a few years ago with fewer than 10 in one facility and today have deployed more than 2,000 worldwide.

Xiao: ALTs are different from AMRs. The average price of an autonomous lift truck is about 10 times that of an AMR. That’s a big gap. What’s more, other competing technologies might come along. That’s why I think we’ll get a signal by 2025.

Modern: What excites you most about what’s next for the industry?

Xiao: When I started my research, lift trucks had a function in manufacturing and warehousing, but they were not integrated into a whole system like an AMR. In the future, however, I think the small lift trucks, like Class 3, will be able to do that. It’s a mature market, with hundreds of thousands of units in the field, but it’s still growing fast because of those trends I mentioned at the outset.