青岛一年前只有寥寥几辆自动驾驶车辆，如今却已接近世界上最多的地区之一；尼欧利克在当地投放了约1,200辆无人配送车，并希望年底增至4,000辆。中国末短途配送车辆约有33,000辆，预计到2026年底无人出租车将达到14,000辆；高盛估计五年内中国城市里将有超过700,000辆机器人出租车，占所有网约车的12%，而美团认为无人机可承担全国10%的即时送餐，去年这类订单达600亿单。
尽管技术进展迅速，扩张仍受交通拥堵和技术故障限制，没有一家企业在单个城市部署超过1,200辆；武汉的百度车队长期约1,000辆，2024年3月还因多辆车突然冻结而引发交通堵塞，随后中央政府暂停了新的机器人出租车牌照发放。政策层面也在强调就业风险：未来五年经济规划要求“防范和化解大规模失业风险”，而4月的网信监管草案则要求不要“以替代人类就业为目标应用人工智能”。
长期来看，最可能被替代的是低薪、危险的短途货运岗位，例如青岛的年长三轮车司机，而不是载客司机和平台工人；平台类司机和配送员约有2200万，且青年失业率已高，官方担心自动化会加剧社会压力。为缓和冲击，美团已在上海培训约200名人员参与无人机配送，但相较于数百万司机仍只是很小一部分，短期趋势是“人类优先”的自动化试验与就业保护并行。
A year ago Qingdao had only a handful of autonomous vehicles, but it is now among the world’s leaders: Neolix has put around 1,200 unmanned delivery vans on local roads and hopes to reach 4,000 by year-end. China had about 33,000 short-range delivery vehicles on its roads at the end of 2025, robotaxis are expected to reach 14,000 by the end of 2026, Goldman Sachs foresees more than 700,000 robotaxis within five years, and Meituan says drones could handle 10% of instant food deliveries, up from 60 billion such deliveries last year.
Despite the pace of deployment, growth is constrained by congestion and glitches: no company has deployed more than 1,200 vehicles in any single city, and Neolix’s Qingdao fleet has fluctuated as traffic jams mounted. In Wuhan, Baidu has kept a fleet of about 1,000 robotaxis for over a year; after dozens froze in March and jammed traffic, the central government suspended new robotaxi licences.
The longer-run labor risk is uneven: older, low-paid short-delivery drivers are seen as more replaceable, while passenger drivers and platform workers face deeper political sensitivity because tech platforms employ around 22 million such workers and youth unemployment is already high. To soften backlash, companies are retraining some workers—Meituan has only about 200 people on its drone-delivery support team—but the broader goal remains to replace wage-paid labor with robots over time.
Source: China wants more robots but not fewer workers
Subtitle: A human-first approach to automatio
Dateline: 5月 14, 2026 11:25 上午 | Qingdao and Shanghai