"Autonomous driving in progress. Please maintain a distance of 2 meters for safety."
At an apartment complex on the outskirts of Yizhuang Economic-Technological Development Area in Daxing District, Beijing, visited on the 16th of last month, a warning announcement in a young girl's voice suddenly began echoing from a distance through the quiet residential area. Moments later, a box-shaped vehicle measuring 1.66 meters in height, 2.7 meters in length and about 1 meter in width came into view.
The mysterious vehicle with its entire windshield coated in black was the 'X3,' an unmanned logistics vehicle made by autonomous driving startup Neolix (新石器). It had just arrived from a logistics center 5 km away, loaded with goods, and was parked in front of a parcel storage station doubling as a convenience store (驿站) inside the complex. The roughly 3-cubic-meter interior of the X3 had no driver's seat and consisted entirely of cargo space, packed with dozens of boxes of tangerines. Li Yuanzhen, the convenience store owner, said, "The total daily driving distance is 100 km," adding, "That means it repeats this kind of delivery run about 20 times a day."
