OwlAuto Report (ID:owlauto), In 2026, the IPO wave of autonomous driving enterprises is surging, but market evaluation of companies has tended towards rationality, and commercialization capability has become a core consideration. Against this backdrop, the unmanned logistics vehicle sector has stood out with a clear business model, becoming the autonomous driving commercialization direction most favored by capital and the market. Among them, the four companies Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle, NewStone, White Rhino, and Jiushi - established successively between 2015 and 2021 - are known in the industry as the "Four Little Dragons" of unmanned logistics vehicles.
Reviewing the growth journey of the "Four Little Dragons", they each have distinct characteristics. Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle started earliest, establishing the ET Lab in 2015, launching "Little Donkey" in 2020 and deploying it on a large scale in campuses and communities, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 1 million orders, and was strategically integrated with Jiushi in 2023, showcasing ten years of accumulation leading to rapid growth. NewStone was founded in 2018 by Yu Enyuan with a logistics hardware background; after encountering setbacks on the "Mobile Container" route early on, it transformed and accumulated early customers with the X3, X6. White Rhino founder Zhu Lei possesses Baidu autonomous driving DNA, founded in 2019 directly entered instant delivery, received investment from SF Express and Xinyuan Motors, and steadily advanced in express delivery connection scenarios. The latest entrant Jiushi, its core team comes from Baidu Apollo, Waymo, expanded rapidly after being established in 2021, the fleet rose from 200 units at the beginning of 2023 to 2,000 units in 2024, reaching 20,000 units after integration with Cainiao, demonstrating strong upward momentum.
Among them, Jiushi is undoubtedly a highly explosive player. In 2023, it released the world's first Robovan — Z5, breaking the industry's fixed perception of unmanned vehicles as "small, low-speed, closed scenarios" with 5 cubic meters volume, nearly 1 ton load, and 40km/h speed. Before that, Cainiao Little Donkey cargo box was only 2 cubic meters, 20km/h; NewStone X3 Plus was only 2.4 cubic meters, and White Rhino R3 was also only 3 cubic meters. Jiushi tore open a market gap with the Robovan category, subsequently launched Z8, Z10, and heavy-load L series, after which Cainiao, NewStone, and White Rhino also followed suit, all launching models exceeding 5 cubic meters in 2025, and the industry entered a stage of scaled competition.
And 2025 also became a year of significant growth in fleet size for each company. Jiushi operates over 7,000 units in more than 300 cities nationwide; cumulative deliveries exceeded 20,000 units after integration with Cainiao. Cumulative sales of 5+ cubic meter models exceeded 25,000 units, accounting for nearly 70% of Robovan investments among mainstream express companies like ZTO and YTO. It also won all bidding segments for China Post's 7,000 unit procurement project and operates in overseas markets including UAE, Malaysia, and Singapore. NewStone cumulative deliveries exceeded 17,000 units, co-launching the world's first "Robovan-as-a-Service" model with Didi. White Rhino covers nine business scenarios under deep empowerment from SF Express. After the merger of Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle and Jiushi, a "Super Carrier" was formed, possessing the world's largest Robovan fleet, with delivery volume exceeding the sum of all other enterprises.
In 2026, the "Four Little Dragons" landscape has evolved into a "one super, many strong" structure. With the merger of Cainiao and Jiushi, industry concentration has significantly increased, and the implementation of map-less technology will become a new competitive watershed. Jiushi, NewStone, and White Rhino all plan to launch map-less autonomous driving technology this year, which will significantly reduce deployment costs and accelerate scaled implementation. The influx of new players such as Desay SV, Momenta, and Dreame, along with the ecosystem deepening of giants like JD and Meituan, is further revitalizing this market. Robovan is no longer a distant concept product; how its future development prospects will unfold and how the capital story will be written is worth waiting for.
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