An unmanned vehicle makes a delivery in Hohhot on Oct 21. [Photo provided to en.hhhtnews.com]

Five L4 self-driving unmanned delivery vehicles recently started operating in communities in Hohhot, capital of North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, to help with the city's fight against a new round of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The unmanned delivery vehicles were donated by local dairy giant Yili Group and Changsha Xingshen Intelligent Technology Co. They are active in food distribution, express deliveries and in distributing daily necessities in closed-off and controlled areas – greatly reducing labor and avoiding cross-infections of epidemic prevention staff members.

The delivery vehicles have L4-level autonomous driving capabilities, as well as core driverless technologies such as intelligent control decision-making, multi-source fusion perception and positioning. This ensures their smooth operations, both indoors and outdoors, which will not affect the dispatch of materials even in bad weather.

They can travel 100 kilometers after being fully charged in 3.5 hours and can help communities carry out 24-hour unmanned deliveries.

Loaded with materials, it is estimated that each vehicle can make 90 deliveries a day, which can save on the labor costs of 3-4 people.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, Yili has invested a total of 380 million yuan ($52.33 million) in virus prevention and control efforts.

Some 60 million yuan of that was donated that year to the China Red Cross Foundation, to support its epidemic prevention and control work in Inner Mongolia and Hohhot.