Autonomous delivery vans have exploded into an unlikely meme in China after viral clips showed them ploughing through fresh concrete, dragging motorcycles, bouncing over cratered roads, and cruising down shallow rivers.
Thousands of these driverless vehicles have been deployed across dozens of cities to modernise delivery. But despite being made in China, they often seem ill-fitted for the nation's narrow backstreets and everyday cultural practices, often turning cutting-edge AI into a sort of slapstick chaos.
If you've never seen a van bounce over gravel like an overstimulated rodeo horse, buckle up.
When China's driverless cars meet gravel, grains, and speed bumps
As residents of certain U.S. states complain about the havoc wrecked by robotaxis, China is dealing with full-sized driverless vans. These vehicles were designed to fill service gaps in big cities and remote towns, but at least in some cases, they may be more trouble than they're worth.
If it's not your vegetables under the wheels, the results can be pretty funny. These vans have become a meme across Chinese social media and began leaking into international waters in January.
"In China, driverless delivery vans have become a total meme, they plow through crumbling roads, fresh concrete, motorcycles, anything," wrote @klara_sjo on X.
"Nothing stops them."
In that video alone, which gained over 6.1 million views, vans like this try to bridge uneven gaps, swerve over grains at top speed, bounce and buck on unpaved roads, drive into wet cement, and drag helpless motorbikes along. One refuses to move from an intersection until a human gives it a swift kick in the rear.
This is just one compilation among many.
Another on TikTok shows just how determined these vans are to reach their destination. Some push against barriers (or get stuck on them), plow through objects or construction sites, or just cruise down the middle of the local river.
They can also get real confused when faced with multiple speed bumps in a row.
Chinese delivery fans meet Chinese culture
Part of the problem seems to be that whoever made the vans didn't account for old cultural norms.
On Instagram, another video shows an elderly woman desperately trying to stop a persistent van from running over the vegetables she laid out in the road to dry—a common practice in China, just like with the grains.
"When old and new cultures clash," @have_you_met_thed commented.
At the same time, one quirk of human culture leads viewers to humanize or at least compare the vans to hapless animals.
China Insider featured one viral video of a driverless van trying to make it over a very rough, unpaved road, its headlights blinking out of turn as it bounces and leaps until it finally stalls.
Whoever's filming laughs the entire time.
"POV: this delivery robot truck is fighting for its life," the caption reads.
"Poor little things eyes looked so hopeful, then they got a nervous twitch," said commenter @lilitbilisi_travel.
It doesn't have eyes or a life, but some of the van companies encourage this humanization by painting a cute face on the front.
It's hard not to feel sorry for the one in a video posted by @pipidaily2 on TikTok, which suffered a similar fate. It even has a cute little "voice" possibly announcing that it's broken now.
This may be why people are responding with less vitriol than they do to Waymos or autonomous Teslas.
"If only I could live as carefree as a Chinese delivery van," said @van00sa on X.
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