Central media focused on new developments. Sany Group is making strides from a traditional machinery manufacturing enterprise to an AI-native robot company.
At the Sany Group Science and Technology Festival Achievement Exhibition held in Changsha, Hunan on March 30, many shocking cutting-edge technologies for construction machinery were amazing.
With the support of independent innovative fleet collaborative operation technology, the unmanned press fleet cooperates tacitly to “press the road”; the visual language model equipped on the vehicle terminal allows the mechanical equipment to not only understand the instructions, but also understand the scene.
Li Hongwei, Vice President of Sany Group and Director of R&D Headquarters, said on April 8, “New energy, electrification, intelligence, and unmanned technology are the key technologies that will change the development of the future equipment industry. Increasing the research and development of related technologies is not a multiple-choice question for us, but a must-answer question.” What is certain is that in the future, Sany Group will develop into an AI-native robot company.
Under the new situation, Sany Group supports global development with R&D.
The Sany Jiangshan 636C, which adopts the “Magic Pan” universal chassis design and integrates multiple innovative technologies such as dual-motor electric drive axles, 800V domain control platform, full air suspension, and 636 kWh super large bottom battery, ranks in the C position in the electrification achievements exhibition area.
In September last year, Jiangshan 636C obtained EU vehicle type certification and became my country’s first long-range electric tractor to be sold in batches to Europe. This is also a typical case in which Sany Group uses new productivity to drive electric heavy trucks to break through the long-haul trunk logistics scenario.
In 2025, the company’s electrified product sales will exceed 20 billion yuan, and its share in this field is far ahead.
At the Science and Technology Festival, Sany Group proposed the theme of “New Technology to Win the Future”. The success of electrification transformation is the first connotation of the word “new”.
SANY Group’s overseas revenue accounts for half of its total revenue, and its global development has entered an accelerated stage. To this end, SANY Group has actively built an efficient global R&D network, established R&D centers and innovation centers in many places, and built overseas manufacturing bases. It also insists on investing 5% of its annual sales revenue into R&D, and successfully develops hundreds of new products and new technology projects every year.
Faced with new trends, Sany Group has launched the research and development of “intelligent unmanned collaboration”.
A large-scale coal mine project in Xinjiang is the first transportation capacity contracting project that Sany Intelligent Mine has tried to operate. It provides overall solutions for driverless transportation and builds a core intelligent system.
To date, the project has operated for more than 220,000 kilometers, transported more than 2.22 million cubic meters of earth and stone, and achieved a full-time efficiency of over 90%. It provides a replicable and scalable demonstration path for the intelligent transformation of mines, and verifies the feasibility of autonomous commercial operations.
However, existing intelligent unmanned scenarios are mainly limited to closed areas. The overall collaborative efficiency of machinery has no outstanding advantages compared with labor costs. The safety and reliability of intelligent machinery needs to be improved.
In the unmanned future, humans will be the planners of work scenarios. Machinery and equipment will be interconnected and work autonomously driven by data. This is the second level of “new” meaning that SANY Group is striving to pursue.
In addition to its domestic mine layout, Sany Group is also actively exploring unmanned operations in multiple overseas mines.
In terms of new paradigms, Sany Group uses data to drive AI-native innovation.
In 2019, we launched a comprehensive digital transformation, spending tens of billions of yuan to upgrade traditional factories and build Changsha No. 18 Smart Lighthouse Factory.
As of 2025, 35 smart/lighthouse factories have been built around the world (including 3 world-class lighthouse factories), and the first 5G fully connected factory in the equipment manufacturing industry has been built.
In recent years, more than half of its R&D investment has been used for the reserve and development of electronic and intelligent technologies, especially the research and development of unmanned forward-looking and disruptive technologies and the exploration of commercial application scenarios.
Intelligent and unmanned technology has been fully implemented in Sany Group. The self-developed unmanned loader has been successfully commercialized. The unmanned spreader press group has set an industry record for continuous high-speed construction operations. It has also launched remote control equipment and intelligent construction tools to build a full-scenario intelligent solution.
SANY Group believes that the development of unmanned construction machinery is an inevitable trend, and it must not only solve the problem of technical realization, but also solve the problem of “economic applicability”.
To this end, we actively cooperate with artificial intelligence companies and university research institutes to build a new ecological chain, explore standard communication protocols and management models, and try new business models.
Fu Weizhong, director of Sany Group, said that in the future, it will adhere to the development strategy of “globalization, digital intelligence, and low carbonization” and use R&D and innovation as the core engine for the company’s sustainable growth.
