OwlAuto Report (ID:owlauto), In 2026, the IPO wave of autonomous driving enterprises is surging, but market evaluation of companies has tended towards rationality, and commercialization capability has become a core consideration. Against this backdrop, the unmanned logistics vehicle sector has stood out with a clear business model, becoming the autonomous driving commercialization direction most favored by capital and the market. Among them, the four companies Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle, NewStone, White Rhino, and Jiushi - established successively between 2015 and 2021 - are known in the industry as the "Four Little Dragons" of unmanned logistics vehicles.

Reviewing the growth journey of the "Four Little Dragons", they each have distinct characteristics. Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle started earliest, establishing the ET Lab in 2015, launching "Little Donkey" in 2020 and deploying it on a large scale in campuses and communities, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 1 million orders, and was strategically integrated with Jiushi in 2023, showcasing ten years of accumulation leading to rapid growth. NewStone was founded in 2018 by Yu Enyuan with a logistics hardware background; after encountering setbacks on the "Mobile Container" route early on, it transformed and accumulated early customers with the X3, X6. White Rhino founder Zhu Lei possesses Baidu autonomous driving DNA, founded in 2019 directly entered instant delivery, received investment from SF Express and Xinyuan Motors, and steadily advanced in express delivery connection scenarios. The latest entrant Jiushi, its core team comes from Baidu Apollo, Waymo, expanded rapidly after being established in 2021, the fleet rose from 200 units at the beginning of 2023 to 2,000 units in 2024, reaching 20,000 units after integration with Cainiao, demonstrating strong upward momentum.

Among them, Jiushi is undoubtedly a highly explosive player. In 2023, it released the world's first Robovan — Z5, breaking the industry's fixed perception of unmanned vehicles as "small, low-speed, closed scenarios" with 5 cubic meters volume, nearly 1 ton load, and 40km/h speed. Before that, Cainiao Little Donkey cargo box was only 2 cubic meters, 20km/h; NewStone X3 Plus was only 2.4 cubic meters, and White Rhino R3 was also only 3 cubic meters. Jiushi tore open a market gap with the Robovan category, subsequently launched Z8, Z10, and heavy-load L series, after which Cainiao, NewStone, and White Rhino also followed suit, all launching models exceeding 5 cubic meters in 2025, and the industry entered a stage of scaled competition.

And 2025 also became a year of significant growth in fleet size for each company. Jiushi operates over 7,000 units in more than 300 cities nationwide; cumulative deliveries exceeded 20,000 units after integration with Cainiao. Cumulative sales of 5+ cubic meter models exceeded 25,000 units, accounting for nearly 70% of Robovan investments among mainstream express companies like ZTO and YTO. It also won all bidding segments for China Post's 7,000 unit procurement project and operates in overseas markets including UAE, Malaysia, and Singapore. NewStone cumulative deliveries exceeded 17,000 units, co-launching the world's first "Robovan-as-a-Service" model with Didi. White Rhino covers nine business scenarios under deep empowerment from SF Express. After the merger of Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle and Jiushi, a "Super Carrier" was formed, possessing the world's largest Robovan fleet, with delivery volume exceeding the sum of all other enterprises.

In 2026, the "Four Little Dragons" landscape has evolved into a "one super, many strong" structure. With the merger of Cainiao and Jiushi, industry concentration has significantly increased, and the implementation of map-less technology will become a new competitive watershed. Jiushi, NewStone, and White Rhino all plan to launch map-less autonomous driving technology this year, which will significantly reduce deployment costs and accelerate scaled implementation. The influx of new players such as Desay SV, Momenta, and Dreame, along with the ecosystem deepening of giants like JD and Meituan, is further revitalizing this market. Robovan is no longer a distant concept product; how its future development prospects will unfold and how the capital story will be written is worth waiting for.

May 26, Pony.ai (NASDAQ: PONY) released the unaudited financial report for the first quarter of 2026. The Robotaxi (autonomous driving ride-hailing) business achieved a new quarterly revenue record. Based on the strong start performance, the company raised its 2026 Robotaxi business target: expecting annual Robotaxi revenue to increase from 3 times that of 2025 to more than 3.5 times, fleet size raised from 3,000 vehicles to over 3,500 vehicles, covering more than 20 cities domestically and internationally.

In the first quarter, Pony.ai achieved total revenue of 236 million Yuan, a 145% increase year-on-year and a 17.6% increase quarter-on-quarter; gross profit was 38.36 million Yuan, up 140.1% year-on-year, mainly driven by the explosive expansion of the Robotaxi business and the rapid scaling of the Intelligent Solutions business (formerly "Technology Licensing and Application Business"). The company's operational efficiency continues to improve; operating loss in the first quarter remained basically flat year-on-year and narrowed by 21% quarter-on-quarter. As of March 31, the company held cash equivalents and long-term and short-term financial investments totaling 9.902 billion Yuan (approximately $1.436 billion), with ample capital reserves providing solid support for the long-term scaling strategy.

After achieving positive earnings per vehicle at the city level, the Robotaxi business entered a high-speed growth stage. Robotaxi business revenue in the first quarter reached 59.12 million Yuan, a 395.4% surge year-on-year and a 28.7% increase quarter-on-quarter — this single quarter figure has already exceeded half of the 2025 full-year Robotaxi revenue of 116 million Yuan. Among them, passenger fare revenue surged 456.5% year-on-year, becoming the core growth momentum. As of May 2026, the scale of Robotaxi registered users in China has exceeded three times that of the same period last year.

Pony.ai Founder and CEO Peng Jun stated: "The start of 2026 was excellent. Scaled fleets, outstanding technology and operational capabilities, and high-quality user experience have become our core barriers. Driven by the 'China + Overseas' dual-engine strategy and the co-built fleet model, the company will continue to accelerate revenue growth and consolidate its leading position in the industry."

This year, Pony.ai Robotaxi has achieved monthly growth in three major commercialization indicators: fleet size, user scale, and paid order volume. Facing the travel slump during the Spring Festival and the traditional off-season of the first quarter, the Robotaxi business demonstrated resilience across cycles. The financial report shows this momentum continues in the second quarter: May Robotaxi average weekly paid order volume grew 119% compared to January, and the daily average paid order volume during the May Day holiday increased by 544% compared to the same period last year.

It is worth noting that even if the discounted Robotaxi pricing is higher than entry-level ride-hailing, user demand remains strong, especially during peak hours. This means users are willing to pay for the experience and value of the product itself. While expanding rapidly, Pony.ai continues to improve operational efficiency and experience and reduce daily operational costs by optimizing charging efficiency and dispatch algorithms.

Supported by the rapid growth of the Robotaxi business is the simultaneous expansion of fleet size and operational footprint. As of May 24, Pony.ai Robotaxi fleet size has exceeded 1,700 vehicles; the newly added model this year — Toyota bZ4X Robotaxi — has started full autonomous driving testing and will be deployed in multiple top domestic cities this year. During the Beijing Auto Show, the company further announced that the cost of domestic Robotaxi vehicles in 2027 (including vehicles, batteries, and autonomous driving kits) will be controlled within 230,000 Yuan, paving the cost path for commercialization landing.

In the domestic market, Pony.ai Robotaxi services entered Guangzhou city center in the first quarter, covering landmarks such as Canton Tower and the China Import and Export Fair Complex. Overseas markets entered a period of rapid expansion: the company launched Europe's first Robotaxi commercial service in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, and started unmanned testing in Dubai. Currently, Pony.ai Robotaxi business covers 9 countries globally and has opened public ride-hailing services in China, Croatia, Qatar, Singapore, and South Korea.

Pony.ai Founder and CTO Lou Tiancheng stated that world models and multi-layered safety systems are the underlying support for promoting long-term commercialization. In April 2026, the company completed the PonyWorld World Model 2.0 iteration, with the R&D paradigm shifting from "Reinforcement Learning" to "Autonomous Learning", entering a new stage of autonomous driving technology driven by AI. At the same time, the company has built a multi-dimensional safety defense line: at the algorithm level, reinforcement learning and world models make vehicle safety in complex scenarios far superior to human drivers; at the vehicle level, system-level multi-redundancy design achieves fault tolerance, ensuring safe vehicle operation and parking to the side when hardware/software fails; at the operational level, a dedicated security team embeds safety mechanisms into the entire operational process, cooperating with efficient remote support and ground assistance for rapid response to emergencies.

Other business lines also showed impressive growth momentum. The Robotruck (autonomous truck) business revenue in the first quarter was 70.33 million Yuan, up 31% year-on-year. Pony.ai announced in April to launch a full-scenario freight layout of "Trunk Logistics + Urban Distribution": the fourth-generation pure electric heavy truck will enter mass production in the second half of this year, and the company also becomes the first enterprise in the country to carry out autonomous heavy truck formation unmanned freight on the Beijing-Tianjin route; the first full-vehicle-spec, full-redundancy unmanned light truck was also unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show. Relying on the same technology stack, operation system, and vehicle-spec kit as Robotaxi, the single-kilometer urban distribution freight cost decreased by 40%-50% compared to manual labor. Intelligent Solutions business revenue in the first quarter was 107 million Yuan, up 246.5% year-on-year. Among them, the shipment volume of autonomous driving domain controllers in the first quarter increased to more than 6 times that of the same period last year, mainly benefiting from the strong demand in low-speed unmanned delivery, unmanned cleaning, logistics, and humanoid robot markets.

Pony.ai CFO Wang Haojun was full of confidence in achieving the annual goals: "Driven by the Robotaxi dual-engine strategy, we delivered a strong opening performance report — a single quarter of Robotaxi revenue exceeded half of the last full year. Based on this momentum, we proactively raised the annual goal. This not only shows that Pony.ai, as the industry leader, is accelerating realizing commercialization implementation, but also means that L4 autonomous driving has ushered in a watershed moment for scaled commercial operation."

OwlAuto Report (ID:owlauto), In 2026, the IPO wave of autonomous driving enterprises is surging, but market evaluation of companies has tended towards rationality, and commercialization capability has become a core consideration. Against this backdrop, the unmanned logistics vehicle sector has stood out with a clear business model, becoming the autonomous driving commercialization direction most favored by capital and the market. Among them, the four companies Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle, NewStone, White Rhino, and Jiushi - established successively between 2015 and 2021 - are known in the industry as the "Four Little Dragons" of unmanned logistics vehicles.

Reviewing the growth journey of the "Four Little Dragons", they each have distinct characteristics. Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle started earliest, establishing the ET Lab in 2015, launching "Little Donkey" in 2020 and deploying it on a large scale in campuses and communities, with cumulative deliveries exceeding 1 million orders, and was strategically integrated with Jiushi in 2023, showcasing ten years of accumulation leading to rapid growth. NewStone was founded in 2018 by Yu Enyuan with a logistics hardware background; after encountering setbacks on the "Mobile Container" route early on, it transformed and accumulated early customers with the X3, X6. White Rhino founder Zhu Lei possesses Baidu autonomous driving DNA, founded in 2019 directly entered instant delivery, received investment from SF Express and Xinyuan Motors, and steadily advanced in express delivery connection scenarios. The latest entrant Jiushi, its core team comes from Baidu Apollo, Waymo, expanded rapidly after being established in 2021, the fleet rose from 200 units at the beginning of 2023 to 2,000 units in 2024, reaching 20,000 units after integration with Cainiao, demonstrating strong upward momentum.

Among them, Jiushi is undoubtedly a highly explosive player. In 2023, it released the world's first Robovan — Z5, breaking the industry's fixed perception of unmanned vehicles as "small, low-speed, closed scenarios" with 5 cubic meters volume, nearly 1 ton load, and 40km/h speed. Before that, Cainiao Little Donkey cargo box was only 2 cubic meters, 20km/h; NewStone X3 Plus was only 2.4 cubic meters, and White Rhino R3 was also only 3 cubic meters. Jiushi tore open a market gap with the Robovan category, subsequently launched Z8, Z10, and heavy-load L series, after which Cainiao, NewStone, and White Rhino also followed suit, all launching models exceeding 5 cubic meters in 2025, and the industry entered a stage of scaled competition.

And 2025 also became a year of significant growth in fleet size for each company. Jiushi operates over 7,000 units in more than 300 cities nationwide; cumulative deliveries exceeded 20,000 units after integration with Cainiao. Cumulative sales of 5+ cubic meter models exceeded 25,000 units, accounting for nearly 70% of Robovan investments among mainstream express companies like ZTO and YTO. It also won all bidding segments for China Post's 7,000 unit procurement project and operates in overseas markets including UAE, Malaysia, and Singapore. NewStone cumulative deliveries exceeded 17,000 units, co-launching the world's first "Robovan-as-a-Service" model with Didi. White Rhino covers nine business scenarios under deep empowerment from SF Express. After the merger of Cainiao Unmanned Vehicle and Jiushi, a "Super Carrier" was formed, possessing the world's largest Robovan fleet, with delivery volume exceeding the sum of all other enterprises.

In 2026, the "Four Little Dragons" landscape has evolved into a "one super, many strong" structure. With the merger of Cainiao and Jiushi, industry concentration has significantly increased, and the implementation of map-less technology will become a new competitive watershed. Jiushi, NewStone, and White Rhino all plan to launch map-less autonomous driving technology this year, which will significantly reduce deployment costs and accelerate scaled implementation. The influx of new players such as Desay SV, Momenta, and Dreame, along with the ecosystem deepening of giants like JD and Meituan, is further revitalizing this market. Robovan is no longer a distant concept product; how its future development prospects will unfold and how the capital story will be written is worth waiting for.

Recently, Momenta officially obtained the Wuxi City Intelligent Connected Vehicle Road Test and Demonstration Application License, and launched testing in January this year. Momenta plans to deploy high-level autonomous driving in multiple new cities and regions globally this year. From a technical perspective, the Momenta R7 Reinforcement Learning World Model was officially released in the first half of this year and applied in L4 autonomous driving practice. The model can understand physical attributes of objects, motion causal relationships, and potential interaction possibilities, enhancing vehicle negotiation, lane selection, and navigation capabilities in narrow spaces.

Regarding international layout, Momenta has established strategic cooperation with global top-tier mobility platforms such as Uber, Grab, Lumo, and Xiandao, as well as automotive manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz. Its Robotaxi has been deployed in cities including Shanghai and Suzhou in China, Munich in Germany, and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, and is actively expanding into markets such as other parts of Europe, Singapore, and Japan.