DJI Spinoff ZYT Takes on Autonomous Trucking with Drone-Derived Tech

ZYT is betting that the same computer vision approach that made DJI drones dominant can now disrupt the autonomous trucking race – and they’re targeting the same H1 2026 mass production timeline as Pony.ai, but with a fraction of the computing power.

The Shenzhen-based company, formerly DJI’s autonomous driving division, announced Tuesday that it will introduce its navigate-on-autopilot feature to heavy-duty lorries on highways, with mass production slated for the first half of 2026. The move puts ZYT in direct competition with Pony.ai’s newly announced Gen-4 autonomous truck program – but with a radically different technology stack.

• What: ZYT expanding from passenger cars into heavy-duty trucks and unmanned logistics vehicles
• When: Mass production targeted for H1 2026
• Partners: Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group, Shaanxi Automobile Group, China National Heavy Duty Truck Group
• Valuation: Over 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) following FAW’s $510 million investment

The announcement was made by CEO Shen Shaojie at an event celebrating ZYT’s 10th anniversary. He added that ZYT will launch a partnership with a top Chinese commercial vehicle maker in January to design unmanned logistics vehicles using the company’s autonomous driving technology.

South China Morning Post first reported the news.

The Computing Power Gap That Could Define the Race

Here’s what makes ZYT’s trucking play interesting: while Pony.ai and other competitors rely on high-powered computing platforms with hundreds of TOPS (trillions of operations per second), ZYT has been proving that drone-derived stereo vision can achieve comparable results with dramatically less hardware.

ZYT recently demonstrated urban smart driving capability using just 32 TOPS of computing power on its Chengxing Platform. For comparison, most mainstream Chinese automakers achieving similar urban driving use dual Nvidia Orin X chips with a combined 508 TOPS – that’s nearly 16 times more computing power.

This efficiency advantage stems directly from DJI’s drone heritage. As Shen explained, ZYT had “an inherent advantage in transferring the technology from passenger cars, which have massive scale and high quality standards, to other sectors.”

The company uses the same end-to-end algorithm architecture across its low-power and high-power systems, enabling what it calls “cross-computing power and cross-configuration reuse.” In practical terms, this means ZYT can potentially deploy autonomous trucking systems at a fraction of competitors’ hardware costs.

Why ZYT Exists: US Sanctions and Corporate Strategy

ZYT’s origins reveal a calculated corporate response to geopolitical pressure. The unit was established within DJI in 2016, but was formally spun off as an independent company in 2023. CEO Shen cited two reasons for the separation: the autonomous driving business had diverged from DJI’s core drone operations, and intensifying US-China tensions made separation strategically necessary.

DJI was added to the US Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2020, restricting its access to American technologies and business dealings. By spinning off ZYT, DJI created a corporate firewall – the autonomous driving business now operates independently and has attracted investment from major Chinese automakers and state-owned enterprises.

“How can a research and development team raised in a greenhouse transfer into an independent entity… responsible for its own profits and losses… and thrive in the complex capital and industry dynamics?” Shen said Tuesday. “The challenge was immense, undoubtedly, but we made it.”

The ownership structure now looks very different from a DJI subsidiary:

• FAW Group: 35.8% (largest shareholder as of September 2025)
• DJI affiliate New Territory: 34% (down from 70.65%)
• BYD: 3.9% (invested December 2024)
• Other investors: Including state-owned enterprises and automakers

FAW invested 3.6 billion yuan ($510 million) in November 2025, pushing ZYT’s valuation above 10 billion yuan. The state-owned automaker reportedly disbanded its own autonomous driving research institute in Nanjing around the same time – a clear signal that FAW is betting on ZYT’s technology rather than developing its own.

ZYT vs. Pony.ai: The 2026 Trucking Showdown

Both ZYT and Pony.ai are targeting mass production of autonomous trucks in H1 2026, but their approaches differ significantly.

Pony.ai, which went public on both Nasdaq and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announced its Gen-4 autonomous truck program in November. The company has partnered with SANY Truck and Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor, targeting thousand-unit scale production. Pony.ai claims its new system reduces bill-of-materials costs by 70% compared to its previous generation by using 100% automotive-grade components.

But there’s a key difference in philosophy. Pony.ai’s approach emphasizes redundancy – its Gen-4 trucks feature comprehensive backup systems across steering, braking, communication, power supply, computing, and sensors. This is the traditional autonomous vehicle approach: throw computing power and sensor redundancy at the problem.

ZYT’s approach, inherited from DJI’s drone expertise, emphasizes algorithmic efficiency. The company claims that “the improvement in experience brought about by the optimization of software and algorithms is more obvious than that of simply increasing the number of sensors.”

The Broader Competitive Landscape

ZYT enters the trucking market facing formidable competition beyond Pony.ai. Shenzhen Yinwang Intelligent Technology, the smart car unit that spun off from Huawei Technologies last year, announced plans to mass produce and deploy autonomous trucks in 2026. Horizon Robotics, another major Chinese ADAS supplier, is also expanding into commercial vehicles.

Meanwhile, Tesla is still waiting for full FSD approval in China. CEO Elon Musk told the company’s annual meeting in November that he expects approval “around February or March 2026 or so.” Even after approval, mainland Chinese Tesla owners have been limited to a less advanced FSD option that’s poorly adapted to local road conditions.

China represents the world’s largest long-haul trucking market, making it the obvious battleground for autonomous trucking technology. ZYT’s CEO claims the company is already among the top three ADAS tier-1 suppliers in China, working with nine carmakers on more than 50 mass-produced models.

The company’s passenger car credentials are solid. ZYT systems are deployed in Volkswagen fuel vehicles for the Chinese market (including the Teramont, Tayron L, Sagitar L, and Magotan), and the company recently helped SAIC-GM-Wuling bring advanced intelligent driving to the Baojun Yueye Plus – a vehicle priced at just 103,800 yuan ($14,500).

EVXL’s Take

I’ve been tracking how Chinese autonomous driving companies are evolving their strategies, and ZYT’s trucking expansion reveals something important about the next phase of competition: the race is shifting from “can we build it” to “can we build it cheaply enough to actually deploy at scale.”

ZYT’s drone DNA gives it a unique angle here. DJI didn’t dominate the consumer drone market by having the most powerful processors – they won by making obstacle avoidance work reliably on hardware that could fit in a sub-$1,000 package. ZYT is applying that same philosophy to autonomous driving, and the results are striking: urban smart driving on 32 TOPS while competitors need 500+.

Here’s what I expect: if ZYT’s low-compute approach proves viable for highway trucking, it could force a fundamental rethink of autonomous vehicle economics across the industry. Trucking is a brutally cost-sensitive business – operators care about total cost of ownership, not impressive spec sheets. A system that delivers 90% of the capability at 20% of the hardware cost will win.

The wildcard is whether US-China tensions will eventually catch up to ZYT the way they caught up to DJI. For now, the corporate separation and diversified ownership structure provide some insulation. But if ZYT’s technology starts appearing in trucks that compete with American logistics infrastructure, expect the national security scrutiny to follow.

Are you following the Chinese autonomous trucking race? Which approach do you think will win – high-redundancy or high-efficiency? Let us know in the comments.