CiDi driverless trucks cut China-Vietnam round-trip border route to 8 hours
A local report says each round trip, including waiting at the freight yard, takes about eight hours, against two to three days for human-driven trucks.
Driverless container trucks from CiDi (希迪智驾), a Hong Kong-listed autonomous-driving company, have carried freight across China's border with Vietnam for 300 days, cutting a round trip that took human-driven trucks two to three days to about eight hours, including waiting at the freight yard. That's according to a report by the media center of Chongzuo (崇左融媒), a city in China's Guangxi region, republished by CiDi on Oct. 15.
The trucks use a dedicated 2,395-meter (1.5-mile) freight channel at the Puzhai–Tan Thanh crossing in Pingxiang, also in Guangxi. The Chinese side of the crossing's automated freight port opened on Dec. 19, 2025, when six driverless trucks set off for Vietnam, Xinhua reported.
The report says the crossing now works three to four times as efficiently as it did with human drivers. People still ride along: a safety officer stays in each cab, ready to take over in tunnels, at checkpoints and in inspection areas.
Twenty-two companies now use the service, mostly to ship electronics and machine parts to Southeast Asia. CiDi also automates mining trucks, including a 100-truck fleet converted to run driverless at a coal mine in Inner Mongolia.
Sources: 希迪智驾 CiDi (relaying 崇左融媒), People's Daily Online (Xinhua)
Editor: Ian Lamont
