China Post and Deppon Express, two of China’s largest delivery and logistics companies, have begun autonomous package delivery services in China. The trucks use technology developed by FABU, a self-driving startup with offices in the U.S. and China. The partnership, announced today, marks the first time self-driving vehicles are being put into daily commercial use in China, according to FABU.
“We are very excited that FABU technology is at the heart of the first autonomous delivery trucks in China,” said Xiaofei He, founder and CEO of FABU, in a statement. “China Post and Deppon Express have also been very pleased with the performance of FABU self-driving technology in their trucks and plan on expanding their autonomous delivery services to 100 routes in the near future.”
FABU first partnered with China Post in November 2018 to begin testing Level 4 autonomous driving trucks in China’s heavily populated Zhejiang Province.
In Level 4 autonomous driving, the vehicle handles the majority of driving situations independently although a human driver can still take control when needed.
During the testing period, the autonomous trucks successfully drove over 2,200 miles and delivered over 60,000 parcels during China’s peak shopping season, which includes Singles’ Day, Christmas and Chinese New Year.
China Post is the state-owned enterprise that operates the official postal service of mainland China. The service operates over 39,000 transport vehicles, which travel over a delivery network with 1,926,250 miles of streets and highways.
Deppon Express runs logistics operations in Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
In the U.S., dozens of startups and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are working on Level Four autonomous technology. So far TuSimple, based in China and San Diego, is the only autonomous truck startup claiming to have Level Four trucks on the road, making real commercial deliveries for real customers.
FABU has offices in Hangzhou, China; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Diego and Silicon Valley, California.