At the Yimin open-pit coal mine in Inner Mongolia, 100 battery-electric haul trucks work through minus 40 degree winters with no cab, no driver and no diesel There is a coal mine in Inner Mongolia where the trucks have nowhere for a driver to sit. Take a look at this truck for instance. It doesn’t have a cab, windscreen, or seat. The truck comes with a battery pack, an electric motor, and nearly a 100-ton load capacity, working in a pit that may drop to almost -40 degrees in winter. Back in May 2025, at the Yimin open-pit mine near Hulunbuir, China switched on 100 of these Huaneng Ruichi trucks at once—the largest single fleet of its kind anywhere on Earth. It’s been a year since then. They are still running, with each truck delivering about 120% of the output of a human-driven diesel equivalent. Right there, in the same region of Holingol, AT150 driverless trucks have also started operating. So, how did a coal pit in northern China end up with the most advanced haulage fleet on the planet? Does the financial case actually stack up, and who else is racing to build them? Well, back in 2020, China had just around 90 autonomous vehicles working in its open-pit coal mines. By 2025, that figure passed 4,000. You can attribute this massive acceleration directly to government policy. In 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission ordered an immediate push toward intelligent mining, setting a goal for automated baseline operations by 2035. But there was an even harsher driver, and that was safety. After years of fatal accidents, regulators recognized that the single fastest way to prevent injuries in a pit was to remove human operators entirely. On a global scale, China was already late to the race. Rio Tinto