Recently, DeepWay’s L4-level intelligent platooning heavy trucks completed a fully unmanned follow-vehicle trial along a 200-kilometer national highway trunk line in Inner Mongolia. The vehicles successfully executed full-scenario operations including truck-following, lane changing, toll station passage and traffic light recognition. The milestone marks another solid step forward for DeepWay toward its ultimate vision of developing fully unmanned logistics robots.

Recently, the Department of Industry and Information Technology, the Department of Public Security and the Department of Transport of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region jointly issued the region’s first cross-league commercial remote pilot license for unmanned heavy trucks. The official permit authorizes licensed unmanned heavy trucks to legally carry cargo and generate revenue on designated routes. DeepWay, based in Feixi County, Hefei, Anhui Province, stands among a tiny number of domestic firms to obtain this qualification.

The operational route for DeepWay’s L4 intelligent platooning trial starts at the Ganqimaodu Port, covering two major industrial hubs of Wuhai and Ordos. It encompasses urban roads, expressways, national highways and complex road sections surrounding mining areas. For heavy-duty trucks, enabling unmanned travel for following vehicles on such open roads tests not only the stability of perception systems, but also the capacity of decision-making algorithms to handle long-tail edge cases.

DeepWay’s L4 intelligent platooning heavy trucks operate under a "lead vehicle guiding follower vehicles" model. While maintaining stable formation following, the trucks can independently carry out a set of maneuvers long regarded as bottlenecks for autonomous driving: detecting toll station barriers and slowing down to pass, accurately responding to traffic signals, and overtaking slow-moving vehicles. Every maneuver relies on a complete system loop spanning environmental perception, intent prediction, trajectory planning and precise vehicle control.

By the end of 2025, DeepWay had activated over 7,500 vehicles equipped with intelligent driving systems. It remains one of only two Chinese enterprises to commercialize L4 autonomous driving technology for new energy heavy trucks. As technological and commercial loops become deeply integrated, DeepWay is advancing the value of unmanned driving from merely improving transport efficiency to a new phase where autonomous systems take full charge of driving tasks.

This leap forward stems from the powerful multiplier effect generated after DeepWay located its global headquarters in Feixi. Since its settlement, Feixi, a thriving hub for the new energy industry, has empowered DeepWay to accelerate growth through a complete industrial ecosystem, efficient government-enterprise coordination and robust innovation momentum. Every link in the industrial ecosystem supports technology implementation — ranging from policy coordination and supply chain collaboration to talent pooling and open road test scenarios.

Feixi now hosts nearly 200 industrial chain enterprises including DeepWay, Maextro Auto and Autoliv, forming a full-life-cycle industrial layout covering complete vehicle manufacturing, core components and the aftermarket. Leveraging this robust industrial cluster advantage, DeepWay is rapidly expanding its L4 intelligent platooning business into more diversified and complex operational scenarios, advancing large-scale commercial deployment and continuously spearheading the intelligent transformation of China’s new energy heavy truck sector.