China's Yimin Mine Deploys 100 Autonomous Electric Haul Trucks, Setting Three World Records and Eliminating 1,200 Driving Jobs
A fleet of 100 Huaneng Ruichi battery-electric haul trucks at an Inner Mongolia coal mine has operated autonomously for ten months, setting records for payload, speed, and cold-weather endurance while cutting 48,000 tonnes of CO2 annually and replacing 300 diesel trucks.
Overview
An open-pit coal mine in Inner Mongolia has become the world’s largest deployment of autonomous, battery-electric haul trucks, according to an Electrek report published March 16. One hundred Huaneng Ruichi trucks, each carrying a 568-kilowatt-hour lithium iron phosphate battery and hauling up to 90 metric tons per load, have been running without human drivers at the Yimin mine since May 2025. In ten months of commercial operation, the fleet has logged thousands of hours, moved millions of tons of material, and eliminated the need for the 300 diesel trucks and 1,200 drivers that previously ran the site around the clock.
The deployment, a collaboration between state-owned energy conglomerate China Huaneng Group, truck manufacturer Huaneng Ruichi, and Huawei, has set three world records for autonomous electric mining trucks: the largest payload at 90 metric tons, the fastest running speed at 50 kilometers per hour, and the lowest continuous operating temperature at minus 40 degrees Celsius, according to Li Shuxue, chairman of Huaneng Inner Mongolia Eastern Energy, as reported by Electrek.
How the System Works
The trucks rely on Huawei’s 5G-Advanced network, developed jointly with China Mobile Inner Mongolia, for real-time autonomous navigation. The network provides uplink bandwidth of 500 megabits per second and latency of 20 milliseconds, enabling high-definition video backhaul and cloud-based dispatch across the pit, according to Huawei. The 5G-Advanced standard, sometimes marketed as 5.5G, delivers the ultra-low latency required for real-time vehicle control in obstacle-dense open-pit environments.
Rather than recharging on site, the trucks use a fully autonomous battery-swap station. Each swap takes approximately five minutes, and the system operates at a success rate exceeding 98 percent, per the Electrek report. The swapping infrastructure was developed over four years of joint engineering between Huaneng Ruichi and Huawei, and it allows the fleet to run continuously without the downtime associated with conventional charging.
The trucks have delivered 120 percent of the comprehensive operational output of their human-driven diesel predecessors, eliminating shift-change delays and reducing maintenance time, according to Electrek. The environmental impact is also significant: the fleet cuts approximately 48,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to Huawei.
Expansion Plans
Huaneng plans to scale the Yimin fleet to more than 300 autonomous trucks running around the clock by the end of 2026, according to Huawei. The expansion would triple the current fleet and further consolidate Yimin as the flagship site for China’s push into intelligent mining.
The Yimin deployment is part of a broader ecosystem that Huawei calls MineHarmony, which now has 110 certified technology partners and supports 420 types of mining equipment certified by China’s National Key Laboratory, according to Huawei. The platform has also been adopted at other Chinese mining operations, including Shandong Energy’s Lilou coal mine, where a 50G/100G industrial production ring network has halved troubleshooting time.
Global Context
The Yimin milestone arrives as the global mining automation market accelerates. A March 2026 industry report values the sector at $4.56 billion in 2026 and projects it will reach $6.36 billion by 2030, growing at an 8.7 percent compound annual rate. Rising labor costs, declining ore grades, and heightened safety concerns are driving adoption across surface and underground operations worldwide.
Western equipment manufacturers are pursuing their own autonomous strategies. Caterpillar, which has nearly 700 autonomous trucks deployed globally, announced an expanded partnership with NVIDIA at CES 2026 to bring physical AI and digital twins to its mining and construction equipment, according to a Caterpillar press release. The company aims to triple its autonomous fleet to more than 2,000 trucks by 2030. Komatsu’s Autonomous Haulage System operates across mines in Australia, North America, and South America, and Rio Tinto runs the world’s first fully autonomous heavy-haul rail network across 1,700 kilometers of track in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
However, the Yimin deployment is distinctive in combining full electrification with autonomy at scale. While most Western autonomous mining fleets still run on diesel, Huaneng Ruichi’s battery-swap model eliminates tailpipe emissions entirely and avoids the multi-hour charging sessions that have limited battery-electric adoption in heavy industry. With an estimated 4,000 autonomous mining trucks operating worldwide and more than half of them in China, the Yimin operation signals that Chinese manufacturers are establishing an early lead in the convergence of electrification and autonomous operation that is expected to define the next decade of mining technology.