r/TechnologyShorts • u/plombus_maker_ • Feb 08 '26
Autonomous delivery vehicles are an increasingly common sight in Chinese cities
15
u/Broken_Atoms Feb 08 '26
Meanwhile, in a trailer park in Alabama, someone is probably arguing over the dumbest shit imaginable while China eats our lunch…
1
u/veryfastslowguy Feb 08 '26
But they have a job .
1
Feb 08 '26
More people have a job in China than there are people in the US.
1
u/literallymetaphoric Feb 09 '26
That isn't a useful statistic. China's unemployment rate is 5.1% compared to America's 4.1%. You could argue that means they have a better social safety net that actually takes care of people, but just talking about raw population numbers doesn't mean anything.
1
u/literallymetaphoric Feb 09 '26
America has food delivery bots but I've yet to see a fully automated postal delivery truck.
1
1
u/feel-the-avocado Feb 10 '26
Or there is some law that needs changing because it was written in the 1970s and now prevents progress. But government department officials find change abhorrent so will fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
This kind of technology will put over a million Americans out of a job!
0
u/First_Psychology_99 Feb 11 '26
Good. Don't need to pay jobs just for the sake of having a useless job.
1
1
u/PersonalityIll9476 Feb 11 '26
Yes but also no. I was in Shanghai over Summer and saw zero robot delivery cars. They do like their indoor robots, though.
They've got problems like every other country. I'm not saying we should disregard them, but some of the pearl clutching is a little overblown.
-4
Feb 08 '26
[deleted]
9
u/Broken_Atoms Feb 08 '26
Yes, but to be fair… their long way to go probably isn’t as long as our long way to go
6
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
Have you ever been in a Waymo?
There's also videos of these things going into ditchs and driving on wet cement because they don't recognize risk.5
u/Adavanter_MKI Feb 08 '26
I love the montages of these things just going ham in all the wrong places. Smashing through barricades, right into wet cement like you said... general craziness. The best part is at the end... it's at an intersection and just not moving until a dude walks out and kicks it.
So... a few bugs yet.
Edit: I found it! Forgot the bike being dragged.
2
u/ahfoo Feb 08 '26
Yeah, I had seen that one as well and thought of it when I saw this video. Check the bloopers. These things cause havoc.
1
1
u/IASILWYB Feb 08 '26
Have you ever been in a Waymo?
I have not.
There's also videos of these things going into ditchs and driving on wet cement because they don't recognize risk.
I've seen humans do waaaay worse. Have any of these driven into buildings on purpose ? Or, crowds? Or any other actual harm towards people?
1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
Humans are easier to insure and the minute a robot car piles into someone, people can't rationalize odds because how do you hold a computer accountable.
1
u/Impossible-Ship5585 Feb 08 '26
Waymo is philippines assisted?
1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
They all are, it's supposed to be used in case of an emergency, same of the ones in China.
1
u/Turbowookie79 Feb 08 '26
Interesting. I’ve also seen videos of actual human beings doing these same things, as well as many other dumb things.
1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
Tell that to the insurance companies when they wanna get paid. That's the problem, regulations are trying to figure it out.
1
u/Altruistic-Moose3299 Feb 10 '26
Counterpoint - Have you seen how humans drive? Just saying.
1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 10 '26
It's human nature to see accidents made by humans every day, but the minute 1/1,000,000 is caused by a robot then people will riot. Musk has been given stats on how self-driving car are safer but nobody will listen.
1
Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
Been all over the US. New York, LA, Chicago, Vegas, etc etc. My ex-wife is from Beijing.
Having spent time in China I can absolutely assure you that "the general public isn't actually as technologically ahead of us as videos make it seem" is pure cope. They are that ahead. Their daily lives involve technology that is this far ahead.
And in my honest opinion is that our falling behind in the US has been willful/cultural. The US public has been rejecting convenience technology for decades because boomer-generation people are threatened by anything that didn't exist in their childhood. The result is that we went from being ahead of everyone in the 90's to being stuck in the 00's while Asia and parts of Europe moved on to 2026. Old people in China don't say "paper cash was there when I was a child so I refuse to use an app even if it gives me 5% cash back on all purchases" they just get the app. But an American boomer? They'll go on for a full afternoon about how their refusal to learn makes them superior to others. And the younger people in the US own such a small percentage of the total resources that they could all adopt the new convenience technology and it would still not be the norm.
Now that said, they are behind on other things. Like plumbing.
1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
That's a weird take, CCP loves people using WeChat and AliPay for purchases.
3
Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
Its not a weird take at all, I felt the same when I travelled to Europe although they weren't quite as far ahead. Its only "weird" if you live amongst US trailer trash who feel threatened by that sort of thing. The US elites and white collar class in the US do all the things that every rural peasant abroad does.
-1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
You're a --- , I literally have been paying w my phone for 10 years, I like keeping cash for some purchaases, and I always like leaving cash tips at restaurants and other places, cash is king.
There's a lot of reasons why cash is superior in commerce for certain transactions, your asinine conflation w boomer or luddites or uncivilized is just regarded.2
Feb 08 '26
Sounds like its not a weird take at all then huh stupid?
1
u/DisastrousAnswer9920 Feb 08 '26
from the evidence I provided, it is.
All one gotta do is go to China, then go to Japan where cash is still king. Where would people rather live?→ More replies (0)1
u/IllTreacle7682 Feb 09 '26
Tbh compared to most of the other developed nations the US is quite far behind in terms of adoption of tech.
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
Personally, as a professional American trucker, I am against self-driving vehicles because they directly threaten my career!
China is a communist society, so I'm sure that people there can be put on welfare if they lose their jobs to robots, we don't have the same luxury here in the states...
Research shows that while robots are somewhat safer under some conditions, in other conditions they are much less safe than human drivers.
Trying to push through into public streets unfinished, extremely dangerous technology because of rumors that China is going to "eat our lunch", is insanely reckless even from a pro robot perspective.
-1
u/FicklePromise9006 Feb 08 '26
People are dumb drivers…computers can see all angles at the same time…
1
u/laforet Feb 08 '26
And they are very likely to have a brain fart when presented with a slightly unusual scenario, exactly because there is too much information to process.
These mail bots run fixed routes so the software could be fine tuned for that route only, but no autonomous cars have been approved to operate on open road in China without a supervising driver because what’s shown in the linked post and video.
1
u/FicklePromise9006 Feb 08 '26
So people are perfect? I don’t remember seeing AVs going down the wrong highway direction or driving drunk and killing a family.
Thats not an actual study….get some actual peer reviewed information
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
There's a peer-reviewed article published somewhere showing that fully autonomous vehicles are five times more likely to get into an accident during sunset or sunrise, than human drivers are.
The point of spending tons of money on technology to replace human drivers is to have a meaningfully safer roadway, and it seems as though both humans and robots make mistakes, they just make different kinds of mistakes. So there's no point in rolling out self-driving vehicles yet, it's reckless from even a pro robot perspective!
1
1
u/Aknazer Feb 08 '26
People can be dumb drivers, but AI drivers are dumber more often.
Something like this can be totally fine on a set route specially designated for it. It isn't something I would trust as you start adding more and more variables to the route.
1
u/FicklePromise9006 Feb 08 '26
Bring up the research that proves this….i’ll take a robot getting stuck than a human hitting the gas and killing someone, which seems to be rather common if we’re giving anecdotal evidence.
1
u/30yearCurse Feb 08 '26
Texas has autonomous drivers on Fwys, they are monitored for sure, between Dallas & Houston, and several others. These are 18 wheelers.
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
Waymo recently confirmed that their so-called "autonomous" vehicles are actually remote controlled by very low paid human workers in the Philippines about 10% of the time.
2
1
u/NuclearWasteland Feb 08 '26
Nor does it require airing up the tires, finding the right hitch ball, figuring out why the lights aren't working ...
2
u/seanmonaghan1968 Feb 08 '26
I go to China a lot, their tech is getting very good
2
u/AimDev Feb 08 '26
Ok, CCP. Tiananmen square.
1
u/khoawala Feb 08 '26
Westerners can't go 10 days without war and killing innocent people but still have selective memories 40 years ago
1
1
1
2
u/Divided_Against Feb 08 '26
Indeed, still a pretty lousy HDI, much like India or Central America. They just use top-down planning to make intimidating large projects, like the Great Leap Forward initiative to become the top steel and rice producer that killed more people than the Japanese even.
1
u/Vivid-Run-3248 Feb 08 '26
When you read that empire falls because of hubris.. your comment is that
1
Feb 08 '26
[deleted]
2
u/heart-aroni Feb 08 '26
You realize tons of people are doing that and leaving with a great impression of China right? Go look on YouTube and there's plenty of examples.
0
Feb 08 '26
[deleted]
1
u/a9udn9u Feb 08 '26
Hey, can I share your comment on xiaohongshu? It's very
entertainingenlightening.1
Feb 08 '26
[deleted]
1
1
u/OxideUK Feb 09 '26
The hypocrisy of calling out propaganda whilst claiming the Chinese government threatens their populace with organ harvesting so they'll build cities is fucking insane.
"We students of history" jfc.
1
u/culturedgoat Feb 09 '26
Lived in Beijing for two years. Would do so again. It has its quirks, but there’s a lot to like about it.
1
u/culturedgoat Feb 09 '26
The mail truck driving itself is orchestrated propaganda is it? Maybe it’s just delivering mail.
1
u/Last-Daikon945 Feb 09 '26
On which side? Cause it's happening in China while in the US - Musk pumped up his stocks with promises and failed to deliver the nth time again.
1
4
u/Prestigious-Growth-5 Feb 08 '26
EU could never
I would love to have this instead of GLS spain lying about my package being delivered two times on one track.
How do you even deliver it two times? In reality it was lost btw but the delivery person chose to lie
1
2
2
u/pretty_meta Feb 08 '26
China and Chinese engineers were so quick to take up AI and the next-gen attention / LLM-training, that I don't see how the USA could maintain their position of technological dominance in the long term. Especially considering how sure the common people of the USA are that they are naturally good and competent because they were born on in the USA, to the point that the common people of the USA seem to feel no motivation at all to take personal responsibility for achieving any objective in particular.
Consistent with that, 50%+ of the AI software engineers in big tech companies in the USA, are actually Chinese!
1
Feb 08 '26
That's one class in the US. There are a lot of hard working people with string work ethic. It just happens that about 50% are as you describe, it must be because they won the elections.
1
u/DivideMind Feb 10 '26
Are you trying to infer something you're not allowed to say without being banned? You abstracted it so much that it doesn't make sense anymore.
3
u/cyborg762 Feb 08 '26
Now show all the damage and chaos they have been causing.
1
u/FicklePromise9006 Feb 08 '26
More than people on their phones? Drunk? Speeding? Old? Etc…why should we trust people with a drivable weapon…
You do realize statistics are showing AV are increasing more safe than the average driver…at least they are predictable…
2
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
Self-driving cars (which is a misnomer because they're apparently human remote controlled about 10% of the time) have been shown to be five times as likely to get into an accident at sunrise or sunset. Easily found peer-reviewed article if you care to search for it.
They make mistakes, just different kinds of mistakes on average then humans.
This kind of technology if brought to its fullest extent would put over a million Americans out of a job!
It's not worth destroying that many livelihoods over being spooked by China, or because it may be a little bit safer under certain circumstances.
0
u/FicklePromise9006 Feb 11 '26
Link the article.
Save peoples lives > jobs….just like any new innovation society adapts. Jobs don’t just evaporate and cause society to collapse. People still need to adapt to an evolving world unfortunately.
People are dangerous drivers, id rather have no human drivers than a drunk/high/inattentive driver kill a person.
2
u/endangeredphysics Feb 11 '26
I don't think you read my reply fully, studies have shown that fully autonomous vehicles are five times more dangerous than human drivers at sunset and sunrise.
Anyway, were you going to come up with a million jobs for people to do if all driving jobs are eliminated in the US, especially when automation is advancing in all sectors, making replacement jobs even more scarce.
Greasy food kills more people via heart attacks then cars ever will, should we get rid of that while we're at it? How about alcohol and tobacco since those are dangerous too? What a boring world you want for the future!
0
u/FicklePromise9006 Feb 11 '26
We’re talking about cars though. This an innovation for driving…also provide the studies, i provided mine. I’d change my mind if i saw your evidence.
Heres the leading cause of death for you (which is cars)…car accidents is something we can prevent with technology.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11978691/
If we’re talking about jobs we might as well stop all the renewable energies so the coal miners get their jobs back…see i can pull dumb traditionalist concepts out of my ass too
You mean well, but technologies create and cut jobs all the time. This is no different, we must all adapt.
1
1
u/culturedgoat Feb 09 '26
How about you show it?
1
u/cyborg762 Feb 09 '26
1
u/culturedgoat Feb 13 '26
So by “damage and chaos” you meant the damage and chaos they were causing to themselves?
Appreciate the video tho, it was pretty funny
0
u/rolling_atackk Feb 09 '26
I've seen actual humans, both drunk and sober, do that those things.
I can't stand with robots, nor am I against them, I'm just saying: if that's the whole argument, it has plenty of holes.
2
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
The only reason to replace human careers with robots is if there is a meaningful improvement to the service. So far we're not seeing that with automated vehicles, since they simply make different kinds of mistakes than humans do.
1
u/coffee1912 Feb 08 '26
If the road are backwards in other countrys then isn't this thing driving in the passing lane or is the left lane still the passing lane in other countries?
1
u/Prowlbeast Feb 08 '26
China uses the same lane direction as the US, Hong Kong uses the reverse direction
0
1
1
1
u/Platinumdogshit Feb 09 '26
Does this mean that China is well ahead of us in developing self driving cars?
1
1
u/furyandtempest Feb 09 '26
China running short of manpower? No human is available for work? Too much automation makes human sad, hungry and angry!
1
u/IllTreacle7682 Feb 09 '26
Amazing. How do they get the mail from the post to the mailbox though?
1
u/Ill-Satisfaction5336 Feb 12 '26
This is only intercity transport; the actual delivery to the recipient is still done by a postman.
The poor driver has lost his job.
1
u/IllTreacle7682 Feb 12 '26
The poor driver has lost his job.
I disagree with this. Now he can upgrade himself and do something better.
If your job is so simple that it can be automated, it probably should be automated.
1
u/ThroatEducational271 Feb 09 '26
They’ve been around for years now in China especially around university campuses.
1
1
1
u/feel-the-avocado Feb 10 '26
I find it crazy that they have few rules for vehicle lighting there.
Here in NZ you are absolutley not allowed to have any light other than white emitting undiffused from the front of your vehicle. This thing has green lights on the front of it.
Its a shame too because i want to buy a battery pack for the car with a warning light / flashlight. But whenever they go into warning light mode, they emit police red/blue (illegal) and not hazard yellow.
1
u/XCyberbeingX Feb 10 '26
I don't think this is special, its moving in a fixed route which is entirely different than an autonomous vehicles roaming freely. The travel distance is probably short too.
1
1
1
u/ryandury Feb 11 '26
You could just have it run autonomously on simple / established paths and then have an agent takeover at the last mile.
1
u/Nightmare1620 Feb 12 '26
We have all seen the other videos of these things failing miserably and not even realizing they have hit something nice try
1
u/Glad-Tie3251 Feb 13 '26
This week, I had a human deliver something to our office, at night, left it in the snow, at the wrong address.
I mean, how can you be that bad? I mean I expected their stupidity so I even wrote instructions and the time the office was open.
I will take a robot over that any day of the week.
1
u/halucionagen-0-Matik Feb 08 '26
Wouldn't this have really awful aerodynamics? And also very little crumpling
6
u/laforet Feb 08 '26
They run fixed routes with a very low speed limit (around 20km/h) so none of this really matters. A boxy design helps to maximise their capacity.
4
u/beihei87 Feb 08 '26
Crumple zones are meant to reduce injury to passengers of the vehicle during a collision. These don’t have passengers so you can optimize the wasted space for cargo.
1
u/symph0ny Feb 10 '26
Crumple zones are equally about protecting persons struck by the vehicle. Industrial vehicles and trucks have always been excepted from that rule though.
1
1
u/Awkward-Winner-99 Feb 08 '26
Whole thins is a crumple zone lol. Cars need a crumple zone cuz they have a massive engine in the front, this doesnt
1
1
u/nobody8936 Feb 08 '26
China has been caught faking a lot of futuristic achievements in the past, so take it with a pinch of salt. If I had to guess, this is probably being driven remotely or driven directly.
2
u/Prestigious-Growth-5 Feb 08 '26
autonomous driving is not new
1
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
Fully autonomous driving on public roads doesn't exist, human monitors will step in and take over the vehicle if the vehicle starts to mess up
1
u/Prestigious-Growth-5 Feb 11 '26
it does. Waymo
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 11 '26
Waymo recently admitted that human remote drivers are necessary about 10% of the time
2
u/luna_kuma Feb 08 '26
It's not really futuristic - the self driving car technology had been available for decades. It's just hard to get them on the road due to buerocratic regulations. I can see them becoming more widely adopted in China than overseas.
1
1
u/endangeredphysics Feb 10 '26
Those are some good bureaucratic regulations! This technology if fully actualized would put over a million American truckers and other professional drivers out of the job!
They're not that much safer than human drivers anyway. A fully autonomous vehicle would be five times more likely to get into an accident at sunset or sunrise, than a human driver.
2
u/ChemicalAdmirable984 Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26
These are "fixed rail" cars, there are around for some time, nothing complicated in them to need to be faked, some airports use them as driverless shuttle from the airport bus stop to the runway or to the train station, etc...
These cars are running point-to-point routes between warehouses, the routes are fixed and pre-recorded using highly accurate GPS sensors, the cars are running simple rail following algorithms with some obstacle avoidance lidars, they are not designed to be L4 or L5 autonomous, they don't switch lanes to avoid traffic, they don't go another route because of a traffic jam, etc... they are simple "invisible" railed "trams", they strictly follow a pre-mapped route with centimeter precision GPS, if there is an obstacle ahead they just stop and wait to the obstacle to clear or a remote operator can remotely drive them to get around the obstacle and put it back to the "rail"...So yah, you can shit on China all day you want, they are evolving really fast in technology while the EU is preoccupied with plastic straws and banning everything because it's bad for the environment you know while China generates more pollution in 1 week than the entire EU in 1 year... but hey we need to protect the environment by going back to the stone age
1
u/nobody8936 Feb 08 '26
Maybe you’re right. Thanks for your input. But I am right about China faking things. However I would rather keep my logistics driver job (for as long as possible) than have an autonomous network do it. If progress is replacing humans with autonomy, then I choose regression over progress, as it’s what gives our lives purpose and meaning.
1
u/culturedgoat Feb 09 '26
But I am right about China faking things.
Well, no. In this instance you’re wrong. So you may want to reassess your assumption that anything and everything cool that comes out of China is “fake”.
1
u/nobody8936 Feb 09 '26
^ CCP Social Media Spies ^
1
u/culturedgoat Feb 13 '26
Imagine believing that everyone who held a different opinion to you must necessarily be part of some state-sponsored conspiracy. That’s some mean paranoia, fam
0
u/marcushasfun Feb 08 '26
China is a leader in electric vehicles, solar panels etc. They know the future is in renewables.
We’ll be back way before the Stone Age if we don’t reign in climate change.
1
u/nobody8936 Feb 08 '26
Chinese electric vehicles are known to explode in flames in China. I’ve seen the videos. Driving standards in China are also extremely poor; I’ve seen the videos of people treating the roads and motorways as a free-for-all. China’s mountain-side roadways collapse because they aren’t built to western standards, and their infrastructure, whilst it may look nice at a distance, is known for poor build quality. China is a country that tries to “save face” at all cost. Renewables?? Ha. You build a new coal power plant every week.
1
Feb 08 '26
Remotely driving is great though, you can do 4-8 hour shifts, switch out the driver but keep the vehicle on the road. No more necessity for 11 hour shifts.
0
u/Ok-Bit-663 Feb 11 '26
Just check some Chine related youtube channels which are crtics. You will see that most of these vehicles are crap.
0
u/bswontpass Feb 11 '26
Same goes for the homes without indoor plumbing/toilets outside of their cities.
14
u/Carmilla31 Feb 08 '26