Situated in the high grasslands of Inner Mongolia, Yimin is an open-pit coal mine where the climate is so extreme that standard mining haul trucks, along with their human operators, just won’t work effectively. Extreme cold weather, as low as –48.5°C and featuring fierce winds, mean that conditions are often too harsh for traditional open-pit mining models to be sustainable. In these conditions, traditional haul trucks and their operators are exposed to significant safety risks and equipment deterioration, and shift structures become increasingly inefficient. Previously, four teams of haul truck drivers covered shifts to ensure 24/7 operations, but due to the severe conditions and high latitude, this could be dangerous work.
Despite these challenges, Yimin remains one of China’s largest open‑pit operations, with an annual capacity of 35 million tonnes and a strategic role in national energy security, even as the country accelerates its move into renewables. Shutting down or scaling back was not an option. Instead, the solution was to remove human operators away from the hazardous conditions altogether and launching a project to deploy the world’s first fleet of 100 autonomous electric mining trucks at the mine.
Expansion through innovation
Open-pit mining operations consist of five main processes: drilling, blasting, loading, transportation, and waste disposal. With transportation accounting for over half of total costs, autonomous driving has the potential to introduce significant savings. The comprehensive transportation efficiency of a single vehicle is 120% that of manual operation, with the potential to save over 40 million yuan in labour costs annually, reduce equipment maintenance costs by 15%, and extend tyre life by 20%.
Initial trials began in 2020 with retrofitted diesel trucks, advancing to China’s first autonomous open-pit mining operations in 2022 following full 5G coverage, with performance expected to rise from 87% to 120% of human driver efficiency by 2025. Crucially, this improvement was achieved while removing operators away from the harshest environments while stabilising production in a climate that previously dictated the pace of operations. This was quickly followed by the launch of the full 100-vehicle fleet.
Maintaining reliable connectivity across the vast, uneven mining terrain is essential in managing the fleet, and the supporting 5G-A network infrastructure – developed by Huawei and China Mobile – is crucial to the smart solution. Site coverage harnesses 3CC (Three-Component Carrier) technology, providing 500 Mbps uplink speeds with only 20-millisecond latency across 500 to 600 metre coverage zones. This allows for real-time 8K video transmission, remote vehicle control, and seamless fleet coordination for 24/7 operation.
Huawei Cloud’s Commercial Vehicle Autonomous Driving Cloud Service (CVADCS) delivers customised AI algorithms for Huaneng Ruichi’s giant trucks, enabling flexible operation across mining sites. Equipped with advanced perception systems, including multiple LiDAR, radar, and cameras, the vehicles can achieve a seamless 360° environmental awareness, reliably detecting obstacles even in low-light, snowy, or dusty conditions. Their high-precision sensing also ensures safe automatic parking and smooth navigation.
CVADCS harnesses data from multiple sources, including crowdsourced maps, to rapidly update the operational locations of each truck. The system plans and optimises routes in advance, allowing for secure parking at dynamic dumping sites and real-time fleet coordination. By notifying the entire fleet of each truck’s movements, CVADCS significantly reduces waiting times and boosts overall operational efficiency.
Equipped with a 568 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery pack, the vehicle can carry a load of 90 tons and travel approximately 60 kilometres on a full charge[i]. It also supports battery swapping, which takes only six minutes per cycle. Combined with a cloud-based energy management platform, this ensures 24-hour uninterrupted operation. Additionally, power comes from photovoltaic green electricity generated at the mine’s waste disposal site, achieving zero carbon emissions in the transportation process.
Since the successful launch, the Yimin mine and surrounding regions have become a hotbed of mining innovation, and now more than 200 operational mines use smart technologies, almost half of China’s total. For mining companies aiming to expand into remote or challenging areas, Yimin proves that autonomous technology can turn potential resources into profitable, viable operations.
Award winning, pioneering, business expansion
Huawei has been awarded the Mining Technology Excellence Awards 2025 for outstanding business expansion for its pioneering, world’s first commercial deployment of a large-scale autonomous electric mining truck fleet. According to Mining Technology, Huawei demonstrated remarkable operational excellence and scalability: “For enabling continuous, high-efficiency fleet operations in extreme climates, expanding the operational capabilities of mining enterprises.”
By leveraging cloud-based fleet management and AI-driven route optimisation, the system delivers measurable gains in productivity and substantial reductions in operational costs. The award also recognises Huawei and Huaneng Inner Mongolia Eastern Energy Co., Ltd. as supporting the accelerated digital transformation of mining, establishing advanced autonomous fleets as a core element of modern operations. Most notably, this approach presents a scalable and replicable model for intelligent fleet expansion, setting a new global standard for innovation-driven business growth in the mining industry.
Reshaping the mining landscape
As high-grade mineral deposits become increasingly scarce, the industry’s future relies on the ability to work smarter and extend capabilities into locations once deemed too difficult or costly to exploit. Such pressures are accelerating the adoption of advanced technologies, including autonomous fleets and AI-driven operations, which are set to rapidly reshape the mining landscape, opening new avenues for sustainable expansion.
[i] Figures supplied by Huawei
