Three major industry reports released in June 2026 from the China Communications and Transportation Association (CCTA), iResearch, and CATARC all reached the same conclusion about China’s autonomous last-mile delivery vehicle sector: it has crossed the inflection point from technology validation to large-scale commercial expansion. According to Futunn/Zhitong Finance, the fleet grew 517% year over year in 2025, reaching nearly 50,000 units by Q1 2026. That growth rate makes autonomous last-mile delivery the fastest-expanding segment in all of China’s autonomous driving industry, outpacing robotaxis, autonomous trucks, and highway autopilot systems by a wide margin.
The sector’s rapid growth is concentrated in two companies. Jiushi Intelligence, which includes Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics arm, controls 53.2% of the market with approximately 25,000 units deployed. Neolix holds 36.2%, giving the two companies a combined market share of 89%. That level of concentration in a market that grew 517% in a single year is unusual and reflects the capital intensity of the business: deploying autonomous delivery vehicles at scale requires not just the vehicles themselves but also the mapping infrastructure, operations centers, and maintenance networks that support them. The two companies that invested earliest and most aggressively in that infrastructure are now capturing the bulk of the market’s growth.
What Drove the 517% Growth
The 517% growth figure requires context to be meaningful. The base in 2024 was small — a few thousand vehicles operating in limited geographic areas under pilot licenses, which means that the percentage growth reflects both genuine commercial expansion and the mathematical effect of starting from a low base. But the absolute numbers are significant: nearly 50,000 autonomous delivery vehicles operating commercially in China by Q1 2026 would constitute a fleet larger than the entire global autonomous vehicle deployment outside China.
Several factors drove the acceleration. Municipal governments in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen expanded the geographic areas where autonomous delivery vehicles are permitted to operate, reducing the regulatory friction that had constrained deployment in earlier years. E-commerce platforms, particularly Alibaba’s Taobao and JD.com, began integrating autonomous delivery options into their logistics networks, providing a reliable source of delivery volume that justified fleet expansion. And the vehicles themselves improved: newer models from both Jiushi and Neolix have longer operational ranges, better obstacle avoidance, and lower per-delivery costs than earlier generations.
The cost economics are now compelling enough to drive adoption without subsidies in high-density urban areas. Autonomous delivery vehicles operate 24 hours a day without overtime pay, sick days, or labor disputes. In cities where last-mile delivery labor costs have been rising as e-commerce volumes grow, the economic case for autonomous alternatives has strengthened considerably.
The Duopoly’s Structural Advantages
The 89% market share held by Jiushi and Neolix is likely to be durable rather than temporary. Both companies have built operational infrastructure, including mapping data, maintenance networks, and software platforms, something that would take years for a new entrant to replicate. Jiushi’s integration with Cainiao gives it access to Alibaba’s e-commerce volume, which provides a captive demand base that independent operators cannot match. Neolix has built a network of service centers and trained technicians in its key markets, creating a maintenance infrastructure that is a significant barrier to entry for competitors.
The concentration also has implications for the broader logistics industry. As Jiushi and Neolix expand their fleets, they are accumulating operational data on route efficiency, obstacle encounter rates, and delivery success rates, which feed back into their AI systems and improve performance. The more data they collect, the better their vehicles perform, and the better their vehicles perform, the more deployments they win. This data flywheel is a structural advantage that compounds over time, making it increasingly difficult for smaller players to compete on performance, even if they can match prices.
For the delivery workers whose jobs are being displaced, the 517% growth rate represents a different kind of inflection point. China’s last-mile delivery workforce numbers in the millions, and the transition to autonomous delivery is happening so quickly that labor market implications are already visible in some cities. The government’s response, retraining programs, new job-category recognition, and social safety net adjustments will be among the defining domestic policy challenges of China’s AI transition.
The sector’s trajectory over the next 12 months will be shaped by how quickly municipal governments in second- and third-tier cities issue operating licenses to autonomous delivery vehicles, and by whether the e-commerce platforms that account for the bulk of delivery volume choose to accelerate or pace their transition away from human couriers. Both Jiushi and Neolix are expanding their geographic footprints beyond the tier-one cities where they established their initial deployments, and the economics in smaller cities, where labor costs are lower but delivery density is also lower, will test whether the autonomous delivery model is as compelling outside China’s largest urban centers as it has proven to be within them.