The future is here, and it’s bouncing all over the back alleys of China.
Numerous clips of autonomous delivery vans ripping around cities have swirled on Chinese social media in recent days, showcasing the new technology’s capabilities — as well as its many, many shortcomings.
One video which went viral on the Pinterest-like app Xiaohongshu shows a Neolix X3 unit bouncing aggressively as it barrels down a potholed gravel path. The X3 sports two massive lithium batteries on the bottom of its chassis, a configuration which clearly isn’t helping the vehicle’s suspension as it rattles down the block.
“The roads are still from the Qing Dynasty, but the cars are from the next century,” one user wrote under the original post.
Other examples abound, like one of the smaller Neolix X3s freaking out over a road littered with corn cobs, or the stubborn ZTO express delivery van which got itself stuck after driving through wet cement.
In one clip from September, a Shenzhen woman tried in vain to stop a robovan from running over her prized vegetables, which she had been drying out on the side of the road.
The sheer number of clips are indicative of the massive rollout of self-driving vans throughout China.
Neolix, for example, says it’s deployed over 10,000 robovans across 300 cities as of October, according to The Robot Report. In Qingdao alone, there are already more than 1,200 self-driving cargo vans, which have racked over 31 million miles and thousands of deliveries since they’ve been in operation.
Though Neolix isn’t the only robovan company operating throughout the People’s Republic, it’s certainly the biggest. It was the first to obtain an autonomous delivery license in 2021, enabling it to start accumulating miles on select public roads.
Other companies, like Rino.ai, are following in Neolix’s footsteps, with over 2,000 self-driving vans on the road in over 170 cities.
While the clips are unquestionably entertaining, the robovans are clearly presenting a safety hazard on the roads — and likely a glimpse of things to come for the rest of the world.
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