Autonomous delivery vehicles have suddenly become an unlikely meme in China as videos go viral showing them plowing through freshly poured concrete, hauling motorcycles, hopping over potholed roads and driving along shallow rivers.
Thousands of driverless vehicles have been deployed in dozens of cities to modernize delivery. But despite being made in China, they often seem ill-suited to the country’s narrow backstreets and everyday cultural mores, often turning cutting-edge AI into a farcical mess.
If you’ve never seen a van bouncing over gravel like an overstimulated rodeo horse, buckle up.
When China’s self-driving cars encounter gravel, grain, and speed bumps
While residents of some U.S. states complain about the havoc caused by robotaxis, China is dealing with full-size driverless delivery trucks. These vehicles are designed to fill service gaps in big cities and remote towns, but in at least some cases they can be more trouble than they’re worth.
If the vegetables under the wheel aren’t yours, the results can be interesting. The trucks have become a trending topic on Chinese social media and began leaking into international waters in January.
“Driverless delivery vans have become a pop culture thing in China, driving on broken roads, fresh concrete, motorcycles, whatever,” @klara_sjo wrote on X.
“Nothing can stop them.”
In this video alone, which has been viewed more than 6.1 million times, trucks like this one try to bridge uneven gaps, swerve over grain at top speed, bounce around unpaved roads, drive into wet cement, and drag helpless motorcycles along. It refused to move from the intersection until someone gave it a quick kick in the back.
This is just one of many compilations.
Another video on TikTok shows how determined the vans are to get to their destination. Some people push past obstacles (or get stuck on them), run through objects or construction sites, or just cruise down the middle of the local river.
They can also get very confused when encountering multiple speed bumps in a row.
Chinese takeaway fans meet Chinese culture
Part of the problem seems to be that the people building the vans didn’t take old cultural norms into account.
Another video on Instagram showed an elderly woman desperately trying to stop a stubborn truck from running over vegetables she had left to dry on the road – a common practice in China, as with grains.
“When old and new cultures collide,” @have_you_met_thed commented.
At the same time, a quirk of human culture leads viewers to humanize vans, or at least compare them to hapless animals.
China Insider posted a widely circulated video of a driverless truck trying to navigate a very rough, unpaved road, with its headlights flashing out of sequence as it bounced and jumped before eventually shutting off.
Whoever filmed it was laughing the whole time.
“POV: This delivery robot truck is fighting for its life,” the caption read.
“Poor little thing, eyes look hopeful and then they twitch nervously,” said commenter @lilitbilisi_travel.
It has no eyes and is lifeless, but some trucking companies encourage this humanization by painting a cute face on the front.
It’s hard not to feel sorry for the video posted on TikTok by @pipidaily2 , which suffered a similar fate. It even has a cute little “voice” that probably announces that it’s now broken.
That’s probably why reactions to Waymos or self-driving Teslas have been less vitriolic.
“If only I could be as carefree as a Chinese delivery truck,” @van00sa said on X.
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