Source: Zhiche Technology
Autonomous vehicles can now perform tasks such as delivery, sweeping, and patrolling on urban roads, but the charging process still relies on manual labor. During recharging, staff must follow the vehicles to perform operations such as plugging in the charging gun. While driving can be completed automatically by the system and dispatching relies on intelligent platforms, the last-mile of energy replenishment remains unresolved.
On May 8, 2026, the partners rolled out a systematic solution to tackle this bottleneck.
On the same day, Teld, in partnership with Neolix and State Grid Qingdao Power Supply Company, officially launched the automatic charging and unmanned operation center for autonomous driving — the "Power Island," and simultaneously inaugurated the first phase project, "Power Island No. 1." According to the introduction, this is the world's first facility of its kind. On the same day, "Qingdao Laidian Island Autonomous Vehicle Operation Co., Ltd.," a joint venture established by Teld and Neolix, was officially unveiled, with Teld holding a 67% stake as the controlling shareholder. This is considered a critical step for China's autonomous driving energy replenishment infrastructure toward standardization, systematization, and globalization.
Industry Background: Autonomous Vehicles Operate Independently, Yet Charging Still Relies on Human Labor
Over the past two years, the deployment of autonomous logistics vehicles in scenarios such as express delivery, fresh produce, and instant delivery has grown rapidly. Public information shows that Neolix has cumulatively deployed over 17,000 autonomous vehicles in more than 300 cities across 15 countries globally.
However, the level of automation in the charging process remains to be enhanced. Currently, while the driving and dispatching of autonomous vehicles can be automated, the charging process still requires staff to follow the vehicles to plug and unplug the charging guns and conduct routine inspections. This "autonomous vehicle + manual charging" model has increased labor costs to a certain extent and is difficult to replicate on a large scale.
Furthermore, urban central areas lack sites for batch parking and charging of autonomous vehicles. Past solutions have mostly focused on single-point technologies such as automatic charging interfaces or automated parking garages, lacking system integration capabilities. Some argue that for autonomous driving to achieve large-scale commercial deployment, full automation in energy replenishment and parking is a crucial hurdle to overcome.
In the first half of autonomous driving, the technological competition focused on perception, decision-making, and planning; whereas in the second half, the watershed moment lies precisely in the most fundamental infrastructure. Whether the automatic energy replenishment problem for autonomous vehicles can be systematically solved will largely affect the process of large-scale commercial deployment.
The Power Island by Teld and Neolix is positioned as a systematic solution targeting the aforementioned industry pain points.
Full Picture of the Power Island: Charging Robot + Parking Robot + AI agent
According to the press conference, the Power Island is defined as a replicable, modular cluster architecture for the full-process preparation of autonomous vehicles, rather than a single charging station or charging robot.
Looking at the core parameters: a single Power Island is a 3-story automated parking garage with a total of 100 parking spaces, a total installed capacity of 5MW, and a single-vehicle ultra-fast charging power of up to 250kW. According to official data, it takes only 20 minutes to fully charge a delivery vehicle, and the fast-charging capability is sufficient to support the high-frequency daily turnover of logistics fleets; the entire island covers only 580 square meters, increasing the number of parking spaces per unit area through the 3D parking design.
The operation of this "unmanned island" is primarily supported by three core modules.
First is the charging robot. Unlike the common traditional solution of plugging in from the side, the Power Island adopts a universal bottom-charging design for passenger cars, logistics vehicles, and light trucks: the power receiving seat is placed at the center line of the vehicle bottom, paired with a waterproof, anti-freeze, and anti-mud design featuring a mechanical self-resetting non-powered double lotus leaf curved door; Its charging arm adopts a single-axis bidirectional rigid chain paired with a suspended multi-hole protective structure, offering a 300N lifting force, supporting over 100,000 charge-discharge cycles and 15 cm of parking position tolerance. Most importantly, each automatic charging robot costs only 6,996 RMB, roughly one-tenth the price of comparable products. This low cost lays the groundwork for large-scale commercial scaling.
Second is the parking robot. After the autonomous vehicle drives to the entrance of the island, who will accurately store it in the parking space? This robot adopts a cloud-edge-device collaborative architecture, integrating rigid chains, precision tracks, closed-loop servo drive control, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) vision omnidirectional sensors. The whole process from vehicle arrival to charging docking takes around 46 seconds, approximately one-third of the time for traditional automated parking.
Third is the AI agent. If the charging robot and parking robot are the "hands" and "feet" respectively, then the AI agent is the "brain" of the entire Power Island. The platform is based on Teld's charging network AI digital platform accumulated over the past ten years. It is reported that it has connected 45.03 million vehicles, accumulated 2.3 billion charging and parking data records, with a total data volume of 33 PB. On this basis, 36 large models for battery safety and 11 large models for charging network virtual power plants and intelligent operation and maintenance have been constructed. The AI agent can simultaneously monitor the cell temperatures of hundreds of vehicles, issuing warnings before thermal runaway anomalies occur; at the same time, through strategies such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G) interaction, load forecasting, off-peak charging, and peak discharging, it achieves intelligent regulation of electricity costs for autonomous fleets—reducing operational electricity costs by about 30% compared to traditional solutions.
The entire system is also equipped with 110 kWp photovoltaic system on the island roof, to fully consume the on-site generated green power; the ground is equipped with a water immersion fire protection system as a backup, further ensuring intrinsic safety.
From "Island" to "Chain": Relay Island Networking to Support Thousand-Vehicle Operations
According to the press conference, a single Power Island solves the "high density + ultra-fast charging + fully automatic" problem for local stations; however, to empower city-level operations, the Power Islands need to be networked.
The underlying logic of the Power Island is summarized as "one island for 100 vehicles, one chain for 1,000 vehicles." 1 Power Island + 10 Relay Islands = Power Island Chain. The relay island is equivalent to a "lightweight forward charging point," with each relay island installing 2 charging robots, relying on the nearly 70,000 public charging stations already built by Teld nationwide for expansion and reconstruction. According to calculations, a single island chain system can meet the automatic charging and unmanned operation needs of about 1,000 autonomous vehicles. Relay islands have relatively lower costs and faster deployment, responsible for the forward diversion of vehicle charging demands.
This is like a city-level unmanned express delivery sorting hub: the Power Island serves as the "main hub + ultra-fast charging center," the relay island serves as the "forward station," and the AI dispatch platform is responsible for charging and discharging transactions across the entire road network, logistics demand matching, and power load optimization, ultimately enabling hundreds or thousands of autonomous vehicles to achieve 7x24 hour seamless operation with almost no increase in marginal labor.
According to information disclosed at the press conference, the Power Island chain is expected to bring several major changes at the operational level:
Electricity Cost Reduction
The AI agent utilizes V2G interaction and virtual power plant algorithms to push the fleet's charging load to the off-peak period at night, while discharging back to the grid during the day when electricity prices are high. According to published data, after a single Power Island is superimposed with relay island networking, the overall electricity cost of the fleet is expected to be reduced by 30%.
O&M Labor Savings
When charging, parking, dispatching, and maintenance are all replaced by robots + AI, the demand for O&M labor in a medium-sized city island chain system serving a fleet of thousands of autonomous vehicles is expected to be significantly reduced. This means unmanned logistics is moving from "cheap transportation capacity" to "extremely cheap operations."
Improved Vehicle Utilization Efficiency
In the past, after an autonomous delivery vehicle completed its daily tasks, it took at least 1.5 to 2 hours for manual vehicle moving and manual plugging; according to the Power Island solution, vehicle energy replenishment takes 20 minutes, allowing it to leave immediately after charging. This means the average daily number of operational trips per vehicle is expected to increase.
In the field of automatic charging for commercial vehicles, Teld has already made relevant layouts previously. In March 2025, Teld launched the world's first 1600kW intelligent automatic flexible charging robot "Flash Charge," which is reported to have deployed about 40 units in scenarios such as port AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) and mining heavy trucks. Even earlier, its automatic flexible charging pantograph for buses enables automatic docking and charging once vehicles pull into stops.
The passenger car-logistics vehicle-light truck universal bottom charging robot released this time is considered an extension of Teld's automatic charging product line.
Meanwhile, OEMs and charging operators such as BYD, XPeng, Leapmotor, Huawei, and Zeekr have also accelerated their technology deployment. Third-party data shows that the global automatic charging robot market size has grown from $ 950 million in 2025 to $ 1.2 billion in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate reaching 26.1%. The market is entering the era of commercial validation at an unprecedented speed.
Joint R&D and Ecosystem Cooperation: Tripartite Synergy Forms a Closed Loop
From the introduction at the press conference, the Power Island is positioned as a long-term layout for the industrial ecosystem, rather than the launch of a single product.
In terms of specific division of labor, Teld provides charging automation technology, power operation chassis, and AI-SaaS data foundation; Neolix outputs unmanned urban distribution vehicle models, fleet dispatching, and large-scale scenario deployment capabilities; State Grid Qingdao Power Supply Company provides digital grid and virtual power plant dispatching capabilities at the power supply level, achieving energy support for vehicle-to-grid interaction.
Regarding commercial deployment, the first batch of signed agreements was announced on the day of the press conference. State-owned asset platforms from 12 cities—Beijing Static Traffic, Yangzhou Transportation Industry, Guangdong Energy Storage Industry Development, Zhanjiang Urban Development, Dongguan Industrial, Foshan Urban Construction, Kunshan High-Tech, Zibo Energy Investment, Suqian Urban Investment, Huanggang Urban Operation, Weihai Huancui State-owned Capital, and Penglai Pavilion Cultural Tourism—became the first batch of signed parties for deployment, jointly promoting the large-scale deployment of the "one island for 100 vehicles, one chain for 1,000 vehicles" national network.
On the application scenario side, 12 logistics ecosystem partners signed simultaneously: SAIC Maxus, Guangxi Automobile Group, Hisense Network Technology, Didi Freight, YTO Express, STO Express, J&T Express, Tuhu Car Maintenance, Shuanghui Logistics, Shunxinhui Cold Chain, Huading Cold Chain Technology, and Shenzhen Atomic Jump. They will focus on the full scenarios of unmanned logistics vehicles to accelerate cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the logistics industry.
At the technical cooperation level, 9 automakers, including FAW Jiefang, Dongfeng Voyah, Chery Jetour, XPeng Motors, Leapmotor, GAC Energy, Great Wall Motors, Foton Auman, and Zhiitu Technology, signed a framework for joint R&D and standard promotion of automatic charging robots for high-level autonomous driving with Teld. According to the introduction, this cooperation involves not only product supply but also focuses on establishing a supporting system for automatic charging for future full-chain autonomous vehicles.
Global 100-City Plan: From Qingdao to Exporting the Chinese Solution
Teld and Neolix released the "Global 100-City Plan" at the press conference. According to the plan, over the next three years, they plan to build 300 Power Islands and 3,000 Relay Islands in 100 core cities in China, deploy 50,000 automatic charging robots, and cover 300,000 autonomous vehicles; they will also build 30 Power Islands in 10 overseas cities, promoting the batch replication and export of China's autonomous vehicle automatic charging infrastructure standards and industrial models.
Some argue that autonomous driving is transcending the competition in a single technology track and moving towards the construction of new transportation infrastructure. In this process, whoever first builds a prototype for the full-chain closed loop of unmanned autonomous vehicle operations is expected to master the global connection paradigm among vehicles, logistics, energy, and transportation capacity.
Yu Dexiang, Chairman of Teld, stated at the event: "The second half of the NEV (New Energy Vehicle) era is autonomous driving, with vehicles operating independently. Automatic charging will become the core infrastructure for the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles. The Power Island is Teld's important layout in the R&D, application, and standard promotion of automatic charging robots for autonomous driving from the charging network, and it is also a Chinese paradigm for the full-chain closed loop of the unmanned industry that is replicable on a large scale and commercially deployable, jointly provided by both parties for the industry."
Yu Enyuan, CEO of Neolix, stated: "Charging is one of the most critical infrastructures in the era of autonomous driving. The deployment of the Power Island marks Neolix's strategic extension from 'vehicle manufacturing' to 'transportation capacity service provider.' When we build the Power Island into an intelligent and flexible 'network,' autonomous vehicles will play a greater value in smart logistics around the world."
According to the introduction at the press conference, if charging, parking, operation, O&M, data, and AI systems are integrated, autonomous vehicles may transform from single transportation nodes into components of the urban transportation capacity network. The maturity of the infrastructure is considered closely related to the commercialization process.
According to the introduction, the release of the Power Island is seen as an expansion of the charging network towards AI embodied intelligent robots. The autonomous vehicle operation system is also defined as an operable, computable, and replicable infrastructure solution. Whether this model can be replicated and deployed in different cities remains to be seen in subsequent observations.