Chinese self driving firm WeRide has unveiled WeRide Robovan, the company’s first foray into urban logistics. The company says that the Robovan is the first Level 4 self driving cargo van in China.

WeRide will work with Chinese car maker Jiangling Motors (JMC) and express delivery company ZTO Express. The aim is the mass production and the commercialisation of the WeRide Robovan. WeRide will lead this trilateral cooperation and create an autonomous driving (AD) ecosystem for China’s urban logistics.

Robovan is the third self driving product in the WeRide product family, in addition to Robotaxi and Mini Robobus. Robovan’s design is based on JMC’s battery electric vehicle (BEV) model with a redundant vehicle platform and WeRide’s full-stack software and hardware self driving solutions. It is designed to provide all-weather, day and night Level 4 self driving on urban roads.

WeRide launched a Robotaxi service open to the public in November 2019 in Guangzhou, covering an area of 144 square kilometres. A total of 147,128 trips were completed with more than 60,000 passengers during the first year of WeRide Robotaxi services.

“WeRide has always emphasised that AD technologies should be used effectively in reality to serve the society. With the introduction of Robovan, the very first L4 self-driving cargo van in China, we have heralded a new era of autonomous driving for urban logistics in the country. By teaming up with two key players in the sector, Jiangling Motors and ZTO Express, we continue to uphold the “triangle model” of collaborating, an approach which WeRide has adopted since we developed passenger vehicles. We are aiming to deliver both smart mobility and smart logistics for cities in the future,” said Tony Han, chief executive of WeRide.