The latest "2025 China Urban Unmanned Delivery Vehicle Industry White Paper" reveals that China's unmanned urban delivery vehicle (Robovan) sector achieved a breakthrough in 2025, entering a new phase of scaled commercial operations. It is projected that annual domestic sales of unmanned urban delivery vehicles will approach 89,000 units by 2026. At this moment, the contours of the Robovan track are becoming clearer than ever. Express delivery, supermarket retail, and wholesale freight have emerged as the largest application scenarios, with a group of pioneers securing their positions in this blue ocean through various strategies. In this landscape, MINIEYE (02431) stands out for its steady pace and deep strategic moves.
On the 29th of this month, MINIEYE announced the acquisition of a 50% equity stake in Xi'an Tongtu, a subsidiary of ZTO Express, for a total consideration of RMB 25 million. Subsequently, the two parties will deepen the integration of autonomous driving technology with leading logistics scenarios through capital cooperation, fostering a strong bond between express logistics and autonomous driving businesses.
Looking back, the groundwork for MINIEYE's current strategy was laid earlier. In 2020, the company initiated L4 technology R&D. By February 2025, its unmanned minibus was first delivered in Suzhou. In September of the same year, the "Xiaozhu Unmanned Vehicle" brand was launched, with the T5 and T8 models quickly securing over 7,000 cooperative orders, deploying across 18 cities nationwide, and simultaneously expanding into markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Australia.
This acquisition is understood to complement strengths across the industry chain. As a leader in China's integrated logistics sector, ZTO Express possesses an extensive national logistics network, operational resources, and application scenarios. Combined with MINIEYE's advanced autonomous driving technology, vehicle perception algorithms, and cloud-based intelligent systems, the partnership will progressively advance the scaled deployment of unmanned vehicle operations and co-build the industry ecosystem, addressing characteristics of the logistics sector such as significant order fluctuations, complex routes, and stringent timeliness requirements.
In terms of impact, this acquisition represents a critical leap for MINIEYE in accelerating the commercialization of its L4 technology, facilitating a sharper focus on the smart logistics track and expediting the scaled implementation of comprehensive unmanned vehicle solutions. From an industry-wide perspective, as MINIEYE and ZTO embark on strategic collaboration, their integrated "technology + scenario + operations" smart logistics ecosystem will establish a new benchmark for commercial implementation in the Robovan sector.
"Truly Map-Free" Technology Precisely Meets Core Needs of Smart Logistics The commercialization of any new technology ultimately must answer two questions: Where are the customers? Is the cost viable? Although the news of MINIEYE partnering with ZTO has just been announced, the answers are already evident.
First, regarding customers. As a leader in the express delivery industry, ZTO boasts a nationwide logistics network and massive last-mile scenarios, having already been actively promoting the transition to unmanned last-mile delivery. By the end of 2025, over 3,400 unmanned delivery vehicles were operating in 268 cities, handling an average of 8.2 million parcels daily. MINIEYE's "truly map-free" technology is poised to be the preferred choice for the express industry to enhance efficiency through technological transformation, forming the crucial foundation for this "mutual commitment."
Through equity cooperation, MINIEYE embeds its unmanned vehicle technology into ZTO's business system, creating deep, long-term synergy by aligning interests. For MINIEYE, this ensures high certainty in future order volume and deployment scale. Leveraging ZTO's actual delivery demand, unmanned vehicles are no longer built first with scenarios sought afterward; instead, scenarios await vehicle operation. This model eliminates early-market uncertainties, solidifying the foundation for MINIEYE's medium-to-long-term performance growth.
Second, regarding cost. Traditional unmanned delivery vehicle solutions in the industry largely rely on high-definition maps. The constraints of this technical route are evident: high mapping costs, long update cycles, inability to reuse across regions, and poor adaptability to complex scenarios. Covering a single city with a map can take months, let alone thousands of counties and tens of thousands of towns nationwide. This has been a fundamental reason why Robovan has struggled to achieve large-scale commercialization in recent years.
MINIEYE's solution lies in its self-developed "truly map-free" L4 unmanned vehicle, the Xiaozhu T5 Pro. This model completely eliminates dependence on high-definition maps, achieving "usable upon purchase, drivable anywhere," requiring no prior mapping or modeling, and enabling deployment and operation within hours. It fundamentally removes costs associated with map collection, production, and iterative maintenance, significantly reducing vehicle deployment and operational expenses, thereby markedly optimizing per-parcel fulfillment costs in logistics.
Notably, with its map-free technical solution, MINIEYE has also moved beyond the traditional "vehicle sales" model. The RaaS (Robovan-as-a-Service) unmanned delivery service model allows MINIEYE to "sell delivery capacity, not vehicles." This model innovation is expected to deliver dual certainties: stable revenue and cost reduction with efficiency gains.
Of course, the scaled implementation of the RaaS model hinges on two prerequisites: sufficiently reliable technology ensuring continuous, stable vehicle operation; and ample scenarios maintaining high fleet utilization. By leveraging ZTO's mature operational experience and ecosystem resources, MINIEYE can rapidly develop replicable delivery service systems, establishing competitive barriers through a differentiated, closed-loop business model.
It is foreseeable that, based on the favorable condition of deep equity binding, truly map-free unmanned vehicles will soon be deployed rapidly and in batches across ZTO's national network. Subsequently, they will not only replace costly human delivery capacity in existing trunk and last-mile routes, achieving cost reduction and quality improvement, but also easily adapt to complex scenarios traditionally challenging for unmanned vehicles, such as townships, remote mountainous areas, construction zones, and mixed traffic environments.
Technology paving the way, locking in scenarios, advancing the model, and unlocking incremental growth—these four dimensions are interlinked. Thus, MINIEYE has secured multiple certainties while also seizing a position in the Robovan track that will be difficult to surpass.
Deep Integration of "Technology + Scenarios" Unlocks Long-Term Potential The mutual commitment between MINIEYE and ZTO holds profound significance for China's entire unmanned urban delivery vehicle industry. Their successful partnership marks the official validation of MINIEYE's commercial flywheel encompassing technology, products, scenarios, operations, and data, and signifies another benchmark sample of deep "technology + scenario" integration in China's Robovan sector.
Historically, the dilemma for autonomous driving companies has been that even with advanced technology, a lack of continuous, real-world operational scenarios leads algorithm iteration to hit bottlenecks with "lab data." Conversely, abundant scenarios without stable orders and cash flow make it difficult for companies to sustain long-term R&D. Undoubtedly, the deep binding between MINIEYE and ZTO precisely breaks this deadlock.
On one hand, relying on ZTO's continuously expanding fleet scale and real operational scenarios, MINIEYE gains a stable source of orders and predictable cash flow. On the other hand, massive real-world logistics scenario data will feed back into the iteration of map-free algorithms, continuously optimizing vehicle adaptability and stability, thereby allowing MINIEYE to further strengthen its technological barriers and reinforce the positive cycle between technology and business.
From an investment market perspective, the coordinates of MINIEYE's long-term value are becoming clearer than ever. Prior to this acquisition, capital markets largely viewed MINIEYE as an autonomous driving technology supplier, with investors divided over the company's growth visibility and sustainability. With the acquisition completed, MINIEYE has evolved into a hardcore tech enterprise possessing stable deployment scenarios, a mature profit model, sustainable cash flow, and outstanding technological barriers.
In view, MINIEYE, grounded in its core truly map-free technology and supported by ZTO's top-tier national logistics scenarios and operational resources, has constructed a deep moat with multi-dimensional overlays of technology, capital, scenarios, and operations. As MINIEYE transforms from an autonomous driving technology supplier into a core co-builder of smart logistics infrastructure, the company's market share, industry influence, and commercial value will be continuously strengthened throughout this process, with growth potential and valuation prospects poised to fully unfold.