Robovan: A Cost-Effective and Safe Unmanned Logistics Solution
Equipped with L4-level autonomous driving technology, Robovan aims to address three major logistics problems: unmanned transportation, unmanned unloading, and unmanned handling. Currently, Express Delivery Companies that have adopted Robovan have already realized significant economic benefits and improved operational efficiency. So, what exactly is Robovan? What are its application scenarios? What cost advantages does it have over manual labor? And who are the major Robovan manufacturers?
1. What is a Robovan? What Scenarios is it Applied in?
Unmanned deliveryrefers to a method that uses machines to replace human labor or adopts human-machine collaboration, with no or minimal human involvement in the goods delivery process. Unmanned delivery vehicles are typically low-speed, autonomous vehicles with light load capacity and small size. Cities regulate the maximum speed at which these vehicles can operate.
Robovan is mainly used for the last 1-5 km of delivery—from distribution centers to consumers' residential communities—which is the final link in the delivery chain from senders to recipients. According to Zelostech, the company’s autonomous delivery vehicles were initially mainly used in express logistics scenarios, where franchise owners needed to deliver goods from distribution centers to courier stations. However, by April 2025, 40-50% of the company’s customers were using autonomous delivery vehicles in other scenarios, such as transporting tires, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, cakes, fresh produce, and animal feed.
Figure: Business Scenarios, source: Zelostech
Last-mile autonomous delivery vehicles mainly consist of six components: chassis, control kit (including domain controllers and various sensors), upper assembly unit, APP, remote safety operator, and data platform. We estimate the current cost of a single autonomous delivery vehicle to be approximately RMB 50,000 to 100,000. With the future domestication of ADAS domain controllers and mass production by autonomous delivery manufacturers, costs may be further reduced. Key industry players Zelos and Neolix have both announced expectations of delivering 10,000 / 10,000+ autonomous vehicles this year.
X3 Plus | X6 | |
Launch Time | Nov. 2022 | Mass-produced in 2024, tested in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, etc. |
Estimated Cost | Over RMB 70,000 per vehicle | RMB 50,000-60,000 per vehicle |
Cargo Space | 3 cubic meters, serving a 5km radius | 6 cubic meters, serving urban delivery within 10-50km |
Maximum Load Capacity | 600kg (1,000kg when fully loaded), 300 packages per trip | 600-800 packages per trip |
Maximum Speed | 50km/h (25km/h for the previous generation) | - |
Driving Range | 200km, 30-second battery swap | 200km |
Chip | Orin-X automotive-grade chip | - |
AI Computing Power | 254 Tops (96 Tops for the previous generation) | - |
Sensors | 32-line + semi-solid-state LiDAR, 12 cameras, 1 domain controller | 1 LiDAR, 12 cameras |
Compartment Design | One type for short-distance transfer, one type for customer self-pickup (cabinet-style) | - |
Service Life | Theoretically over 5 years | - |
Partner Manufacturers | ZTO Express (signed a strategic cooperation agreement in April 2023) |
Figure: Cost, Key Configurations and Parameters of Neolix’s Main Vehicle Models
2. Economic Efficiency for Express Delivery Companies
Robovan's primary advantage lies in helping Express Delivery Companies reduce costs. Secondly, unmanned delivery vehicles are expected to alleviate labor shortages (especially during peak periods) and assist couriers with personalized customer requests, thereby improving service quality. Finally, unmanned delivery vehicles may extend working hours through nighttime delivery in the future (although currently difficult to achieve) and improve delivery efficiency.
In logistics scenarios, the Zelos E6 can save approximately 60% of the cost per delivery (excluding scenarios such as courier handling):
(in thousand RMB) | |||
Autonomous Logistics Cost Calculation | 3 Years | 4 Years | 5 Years |
Depreciation of vehicle (RMB 19,800 per vehicle) | 6.6 | 5.0 | 4.0 |
Software(assuming RMB 21,600 per year) | 64.8 | 86.4 | 108.0 |
Energy Costs(assuming RMB 1,500 per year) | 4.5 | 6.0 | 7.5 |
Subtotal | 75.9 | 97.4 | 119.5 |
Operation and Maintenance Costs(assuming 20%) | 15.2 | 19.5 | 23.9 |
Total costs | 91.1 | 116.8 | 143.4 |
Manual Logistics Cost Calculation | |||
Courier Annual Salary (RMB 73,500/year) | 220.5 | 294 | 367.5 |
Energy Costs(assuming RMB 1,500 per year) | 4.5 | 6.0 | 7.5 |
Vehicle Cost (RMB 10,000 per vehicle, 10-year service life including maintenance) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Total costs | 226 | 301 | 376 |
Total orders(assuming annually 65,000 orders) | 195 | 260 | 325 |
Cost per Package under Autonomous Logistics (RMB) | 0.47 | 0.45 | 0.44 |
Cost per Package under Manual Logistics (RMB) | 1.16 | 1.16 | 1.16 |
Cost Savings Rate per Package | 60% | 61% | 62% |
Table: Calculation of Costs under Autonomous and Manual Logistics
3. Major Robovan Manufacturers
A) Neolix
Financing: On October 23, 2025, Neolix announced the completion of a US$600 million+ Series D financing. In terms of amount, this round is the largest private equity financing in China's autonomous driving sector to date.
Technology: Based on the Transformer architecture, the Vision-centric BEV algorithm is first implemented in autonomous vehicles. Equipped with 12 HD cameras and 1 LIDAR sensor, the autonomous vehicles enable multi-modal pre-fusion sensing, offering a comprehensive 360- degree field of view and perception capabilities extending up to 120 meters. By discretizing surrounding space into 3D grids through algorithms, Neolix’s autonomous vehicle can identify passable areas and accurately determine the occupancy of irregular objects within the 3D grid in open environments.
Orders: Neolix has become the largest supplier of unmanned vehicles for the direct-operated express delivery systems of SF Express, JD.com, and China Post. As of early 2025, Neolix has accumulated over 20,000 orders for its autonomous vehicles.
B) Zelos
Financing: In April 2025, Zelos completed a $100 million Series B3 financing round, bringing the total Series B financing to nearly $300 million.
Technology: Zelos is the only company in the industry that has implemented mass-produced automotive-grade solid-state LiDAR (commonly used in new energy vehicles) on L4 autonomous vehicles, achieving a vehicle-wide quality guarantee of over 5 years. Dual Orin chips provide 508 Tops of computing power, and through fusion large-model perception technology combining binocular vision and automotive-grade LiDAR, it achieves high safety in urban road conditions. After rigorous environmental and reliability tests, its autonomous vehicles can operate stably for more than 5 years in a temperature range of -30°C to +55°C.
Orders: By the end of 2024, Zelos had over 10,000 orders on hand, with a cumulative delivery of over 3,000 units and service coverage of more than 600 customers. In the first quarter of 2025, Zelos’ new orders increased by more than 400% year-on-year. Currently, Zelos’ autonomous vehicles have operated regularly in over 200 cities across 29 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China, with a total operating mileage of over 12 million kilometers.
C) Rino.ai
Financing: In May 2025, Rino.ai completed a RMB 200 million Series B financing, becoming the first autonomous driving company to receive investment from both leading express delivery companies and commercial vehicle manufacturers.
Technology: Building upon the BEV + Transformer design paradigm, this unified model integrates functionalities such as obstacle detection, general occupancy (Occ) prediction, lane element detection, map topology reasoning, object tracking, and speed estimation to enable efficient, data-driven perception. In addition, independently developed hardware includes dedicated computing units, multimodal sensor suites, high-reliability communication modules (4G/5G+GNSS), and drive-by-wire chassis systems. A vehicle-grade electrical and electronic architecture is developed with redundant designs and fault isolation mechanisms to ensure safe and stable vehicle operation in extreme environments.
Orders: In October 2025, China Post launched a centralized procurement tender for 7,000 unmanned vehicles, with Rino.ai being one of the main suppliers. Rino.ai aims to achieve a daily active volume of 5,000 unmanned delivery vehicles by 2026.
Conclusion
In terms of implementation difficulty and development speed, Robotaxis involve personal safety, so their algorithms are more complex than that of Robovans, leading to more complicated and slower implementation. Moreover, from an economic perspective, the business model of Robovans will be validated more quickly. Therefore, the implementation speed of Robovans will be much faster than that of Robotaxis. Industry participants such as Neolix, Zelos, and Rino.ai have attracted significant attention in the primary market and are expected to achieve rapid growth with capital support.
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