Xiaozhu unmanned vehicles have successfully operated across this county-level city, also refreshing the new echelon of unmanned logistics.

Before dawn breaks, Xiaozhu unmanned vehicles are already shuttling through the streets and farmers' markets of Jiyuan, Henan, starting their daily delivery operations. "Every day at 5:00 a.m., the unmanned vehicles are already in place at the main warehouse loading goods, and depart on time at 6:00, delivering fresh produce such as vegetables, fruits, and meat to the stores to ensure the shopping needs of nearby residents. Store demand for goods changes dynamically and significantlythe same vehicle may take a different route every day, and there are also temporary replenishment orders. The T5 Pro meets our needs very well, not only saving money but also improving efficiency." This is the genuine assessment of the person in charge of a large Shenzhen Agricultural Power Group industrial park in Jiyuan, and it is also the daily routine of Xiaozhu unmanned vehicle operations. On October 28, the Xiaozhu T5 Pro fleet of MINIEYE (02431) in Jiyuan, Henan, welcomed a concentrated media visit. It is understood that this open day differed from the closed demonstrations common in industry scenarios: media followed the real delivery routes for fresh produce, grain, and oil, witnessing the full process of unmanned vehiclesfrom nighttime delivery and navigating complex markets to stopping at non-standardized unloading pointscompleting agricultural supply guarantees and point-to-point replenishment of convenience goods. As a mature sample of China's first "truly mapless" L4-level unmanned vehicle in the county-level market, Jiyuan's normalized operations are not only Xiaozhu's single-city commercialization answer sheet but also an important window for observing the industry's technology implementation and competitive coordinates. In 2026, the mapless trend swept the unmanned vehicle track. From native unmanned vehicle companies to cross-industry intelligent driving players, going mapless has become almost a common narrative across the industry, with technical routes rapidly converging. But beneath the slogans, the quality of implementation varies greatly. According to relevant sources, industry players define "mapless" differently. Some companies are upgrading and penetrating on the basis of previous HD-map or light-map approaches, essentially still retaining prior maps or memorized routes, while others remain at the press conference stage. Mature samples that truly and completely break away from HD maps, can sink into county-level markets, and have run through a scaled closed loop remain scarce. Precisely for this reason, Xiaozhu's operating report card in Jiyuan takes on special significancelike a stone cast into seemingly stable industry waters, stirring ripples of structural reconstruction. Technical route shifts: Xiaozhu runs through true mapless operations This year, as unmanned delivery scales up, customersafter months or even longer operational validationhave truly perceived that the "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" of unmanned vehicles is not an empty promise, and market perception has completed a deep shift from "trying something new" to "practical use." But in the first half of the industry's development, it was always trapped by the shackles of HD maps. Unmanned vehicles under the traditional HD-map route are essentially a customized, heavy-asset logic: every new location requires completing a series of processes in advancesurveying and mapping, map production, vehicle adaptation and debuggingwhich is not only time-consuming but also costs up to several thousand yuan per kilometer for map collection, with continuous update costs required if roads or projects change later. Under this model, the speed of vehicle deployment is almost equivalent to the expansion speed of mapping capacity, and scenario boundaries are limited to preset routes, unable to accommodate fragmented needs such as temporary replenishment and dynamic scheduling. From the perspective of the overall industry, unmanned vehicles mainly replace small vans, light trucks, and tricycles in the traditional urban distribution market. Traditional freight has now entered a stage of stock competition, and using unmanned vehicles to supplement capacity and replace manual transport in harsh, high-intensity, and low-timeliness scenarios is the industry trend. The market (lower-tier market) is precisely the segment with the most dispersed and robust demand for urban distribution capacity, yet it is naturally unsuited to the heavy-investment model of HD maps. County-level cities have irregular road networks, scattered scenarios, and limited order density, making the input-output ratio of HD maps extremely low; moreover, traditional unmanned vehicles struggle to cope with high-density mixed pedestrian-vehicle traffic and complex scenarios requiring temporary avoidance or rerouting. In the early stage of industry development, players represented by Neolix and Zelos adopted a strategy of trading price for volume and scale, accumulating considerable operational scale and scenario resources through large-scale city expansion and binding with leading customers. But as business expanded, the marginal cost of mapped solutions increased, and the "burn money for hype" model was destined to be unsustainable, so the two giants also gradually transitioned toward light maps and mapless solutions. As a cross-industry latecomer, Xiaozhu unmanned vehicles has been more resolute and faster on the mapless path. In April this year, Xiaozhu took the lead in releasing the "truly mapless" unmanned vehicle T5 Pro. Unlike most industry manufacturers' light-map improvement path of "streamlining HD maps and retaining prior information for safety redundancy," Xiaozhu restructured from the system algorithm level, relying solely on navigation maps to operate, completely eliminating the full-chain cost of HD maps and compressing vehicle deployment cycles to the hour leveloffering higher ceilings in both technical flexibility and scenario generalization. This generational technical advantage brings far more than "saving map costs"it is a paradigm leap in the entire implementation model, turning unmanned vehicles from customized products into standardized, replicable general-purpose capacity tools. Only by achieving true mapless operation can true scale effects become possible. Technical advantages directly accelerated market expansion. After the product launch, it secured multiple thousand-unit cooperation orders in succession. At this open day, Xiaozhu's Jiyuan customer also told reporters: "We previously used unmanned vehicles from other manufacturers, which took at least a month to deploy. Now Xiaozhu's T5 Pro can be put into operation within a day, a major improvement in experience, while the previous unmanned vehicles are now only kept as backup." It is understood that Xiaozhu has deployed nearly 90 unmanned vehicles in Jiyuan, with the fleet scale continuing to climb at nearly 10% per month; the vehicle online rate exceeds 50%, each vehicle operates an average of 140 kilometers per day, and the fleet's daily operating mileage exceeds 10,000 kilometers. The route freedom granted by mapless operation further reconstructs the way capacity is used: one vehicle can handle scheduled fresh produce delivery in the early morning and, during idle periods, meet same-city replenishment needs for rice, flour, grain, oil, bottled water, disposable tableware, and moreconverting idle time into effective capacity through staggered reuse. Currently, many companies claim their unmanned vehicles can operate 7 x 24 hours, but paper specifications of single-vehicle performance do not equal actual operations. The normalized operating rate of vehicles and effective cargo-carrying delivery hours are closely tied to a company's local business resources and operational capabilities. According to local customers, Xiaozhu has covered nearly 30 segmented scenarios in Jiyuan, including cold chain, auto parts, maternal and infant products, and Chinese herbal medicine transfer, with delivery punctuality stable above 95%, helping customers save more than 50% in comprehensive operating costs. Sufficient order density and rich scenario coverage mean Xiaozhu has already built a scheduling network and customer system in the local area sufficient to support the RaaS model. Contending heroes: unmanned delivery reshuffles the rankings Recently, Yu Enyuan said in an interview that the unmanned delivery industry has entered the Spring and Autumn period, with a hundred flowers blooming and a hundred schools of thought contending. Just as the "Di Da Hua Mo" (Didi, Pony.ai, Huawei, Momenta) that prevailed in passenger vehicles three years ago no longer fits the current urban NOA landscape, the unmanned delivery industry is also undergoing an iteration of evaluation systems. Currently, there are more players on the track and competition is fiercer. Even though Neolix and Zelos already hold relatively high market shares, the market landscape and industry structure are still not fully settled. In the past, industry rankings simply used vehicle ownership and number of covered cities as yardsticks, but as compliance thresholds rise, market perception matures, and more vehicles operate long-term in real scenarios, companies face more teststechnology, orders, manufacturing, and operational capabilities are all crucial. The crude ranking method of "heroes by quantity alone" no longer matches the industry's development rhythm. Zelos and Neolix, as representatives of native unmanned vehicle companies, conquered the world with first-mover advantages. Both have now entered the "30,000-unit club," accumulating rich experience in order resources and scenario operations and occupying core seats in the first tier. The real variable lies in the cross-industry entry of intelligent driving companies. Since September 2025, a host of intelligent driving playersincluding MINIEYE, Huizhou Desay SV Automotive, QCraft, Zhuoyu, and Momentahave entered the unmanned logistics track. The market once speculated whether the new forces armed with algorithms and engineering capabilities could shake the "duopoly" structure. But more than a year later, the cross-industry camp has not achieved a collective breakthrough; instead, it shows extremely obvious differentiation, with gaps in commercialization progress far exceeding industry expectations. Youjia (MINIEYE) has advanced the fastest. Just half a year after releasing its first-generation product, it launched the Xiaozhu T5 Pro, which completely breaks away from HD-map dependence. Strategic cooperation, bulk orders, and scaled delivery news have landed in succession, and it has also established a joint venture, Yaoxing Dynamics, with neueHCT, independently operating the unmanned vehicle business from an organizational leveldemonstrating strategic determination and execution efficiency. In March 2026, a relevant person in charge of QCraft publicly stated that its logistics vehicle target for the year is to reach the 10,000-unit level; the company has also disclosed a hundred-unit order with Zhejiang Jinyou, and an L4 logistics vehicle jointly developed with Chery Commercial Vehicle has already hit the roads in Suzhou, Jinhua, and other cities, with a long-term plan to advance toward a deployment level of 100,000 units by 2027. Apart from this, however, there is little public information on its scaled operations. At the end of July, Zhuoyu publicly stated that its unmanned vehicles had begun trial operations in some cities. Almost simultaneously, Momenta also officially announced the launch of its unmanned cargo vehicles in Xiangcheng, Suzhou. In summary, among the new forces, Xiaozhu unmanned vehicles leads its peers by several positions in deployment progress and commercialization delivery, and has joined the top tier. Supporting this judgment is Xiaozhu's far-leading development speed. In terms of technology, leveraging algorithms and engineering foundations accumulated from pre-installation, Xiaozhu naturally has advantages in productization and mass production, able to quickly transform technical solutions into mature products capable of large-scale delivery, skipping the long product-polishing period that startups must go through. The L2+L4 cross-scenario data flywheel further enables it to quickly switch to the truly mapless route, adapting from the underlying architecture to the logistics scenario's extreme requirements for cost and efficiency, forming a generational first-mover advantage. In terms of commercialization, Xiaozhu unmanned vehicles have been deployed in more than 50 cities nationwide and, with mapless capabilities reinforcing competitive barriers, are steadily fulfilling an order reserve of "nearly 10,000 units in cooperation scale." According to MINIEYE's 2026 interim results report, its unmanned vehicle and operational service revenue grew 423.4% year-on-year, with revenue share rising from 2.9% to 11.7%, becoming the core growth engine leading all business lines in growth rate. To this day, the industry's long-stable duopoly structure has begun to loosen. Xiaozhu, with its true mapless technical advantages and impressive commercialization results, has broken through, and a tripartite structure of "New Nine Zhu" (Neolix, Zelos, Xiaozhu) is accelerating into shape. It is worth noting that although the new top camp is taking initial shape, the rankings are not yet finalized. On the one hand, the overall penetration rate of unmanned delivery remains extremely low, and urban distribution scenarios such as express delivery, fresh produce, supermarkets, and pharmaceuticals are far from fully developed, leaving vast room for stock replacement; on the other hand, industry clearing and consolidation is an inevitable trendas compliance thresholds rise and scale effects emerge, high-quality orders and scenario resources will accelerate toward the top, and the survival space for second- and third-tier players will continue to narrow. The unmanned delivery competition has only just entered the white-hot stage of real combat. Xiaozhu's scaled operations in Jiyuan are a microcosm for observing the industry's direction. When mapless operation moves from technical consensus to implementation effectiveness, only players who can calm down to polish products, deepen operations, and create long-term value for customers can gain a firm foothold in this contest.