Another company on the autonomous driving track is rushing to the capital market. Shanghai BoLei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "BoLei Technology") recently officially submitted its report to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Its revenue increased from 69.565 million yuan in 2023 to 171 million yuan in 2024, and then to 315 million yuan in the first three quarters of last year, a year-on-year increase of more than 800%. Based on shipments and revenue in 2024, Boradium Technology is the world's largest provider of pure electric autonomous driving mining cards.
Behind the impressive growth rate is serious customer dependence. In the first three quarters of last year, the single largest customer contributed as much as 65% of revenue, and the top five customers accounted for 97.7% of revenue. Bolei Technology chose its own mining truck brand to cover the market, promoted the increase in average selling price through product structure upgrades, and tried to break through the narrow door of expanding losses. Binding the mining giant is the driving force for Boonlei Technology to take off, and it is also the Sword of Damocles hanging overhead. This experiment on the commercialization of autonomous driving is reaching its climax with the submission of the prospectus.
Private brand model
In order to emphasize the characteristics of its own business or its advantages in a certain field, companies preparing to go public often add some attributive words before the industry they are in. Bolei Technology, which recently submitted a report, describes itself this way: "According to data from Chiushi Consulting, we are the world's largest provider of electric driverless mining trucks in terms of shipments and revenue in 2024, and are the first company in China to launch its own brand of self-driving mining trucks and achieve mass production."
According to the prospectus, BoLei Technology’s flagship BoLei Electric Bull brand has launched a series of models developed in cooperation with OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and will be launched on the market in 2023.
The sale of pure electric self-driving mining trucks is BoLei Technology’s main business, intelligent vehicles. According to information from Chishi Consulting, among self-driving mining card solution providers, BoLei Technology is the only supplier in the industry with independent production facilities. It is also the exclusive provider of integrated charging and swapping mining cards.
The smart car business mainly obtains revenue in three ways. In addition to directly selling vehicles to end customers, it also includes selling vehicles to leasing companies and selling autonomous driving solutions including iDrive autonomous driving systems. Based on the results disclosed in the prospectus for 2023, 2024 and the first three quarters of last year, the smart car business revenue was 57.887 million yuan, 149 million yuan, and 291 million yuan respectively, accounting for 83.2%, 87.2%, and 92.4% of the revenue respectively.
Compared with the first three quarters of 2024, the number of self-driving mining trucks sold by Borei Technology in the first three quarters of last year increased from 0 to 136. This has also become the main reason why the smart car business revenue increased by 1298.6% year-on-year. Regarding the model proportion of the 136 mining trucks and the operating reasons for adopting its own brand model, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily interviewed Bolei Technology through official channels, but the other party had not responded as of press time.
However, Borei Technology stated in its prospectus that the company hired third-party suppliers to provide parts and components required for product manufacturing, and also cooperated with contract manufacturers, who were responsible for the manufacturing, assembly and testing of vehicles and other products. At the same time, it is mentioned in the risk factors section that "the company's reliance on third-party suppliers to manufacture, assemble and test our products will weaken our control over product quantity and quality and may harm our business."
Speaking of this combination, Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told a reporter from the Beijing Business Daily that what the company calls "independent production facilities" usually refers to the key links of the core integration of the autonomous driving system, sensor calibration, and joint debugging of software and hardware. Acknowledging dependence on third parties is to reveal to investors the objective risks of supply chain disruption, and also to draw the line of responsibility between technical solutions and hardware manufacturing.
The average price of mining cards will fall
As the core equipment responsible for mining transportation tasks, self-driving mining trucks are the starting point for promoting mine automation. Together with excavation, mining and loading, energy replenishment and other links, they form a full operation chain. In the entire chain, Bolei Technology is not limited to selling cars.
The prospectus shows that Bolei Technology’s business landscape consists of three sectors: smart cars, smart mines and smart transportation. Smart Mining Solutions is positioned as a general contracting service provider for the whole mine technology, providing integrated solutions covering loading, transportation, unloading, and energy supply. Revenue comes from the overall solution package, including equipment sales, installation and commissioning, and operation and maintenance service fees. The smart transportation business provides unmanned transportation services for mines, and revenue comes from ongoing operating service fees collected on a monthly basis.
Returning to the core smart car sector, an irreversible industry trend is taking shape: downward pressure on the average price of mining trucks.
According to information from Chishi Consulting, the average price of ordinary mining cards in 2024 will be approximately 1.5 million yuan. As technology iteratively upgrades and manufacturing costs continue to decline due to economies of scale, the average price of mining cards is expected to show a steady downward trend over time.
The main cost of the autonomous driving kit is autonomous driving sensors including lidar, millimeter wave radar, etc. According to industry estimates, the unit price of lidar (a key sensor used for target detection and identification in level 4 autonomous vehicles) is expected to drop by approximately 30% from 2024 to 2030.
Faced with the trend of price cuts, Borei Technology provided a hedging strategy of using "large" to offset "lower" in its prospectus.
When interpreting the increase in smart car business revenue, BoLei Technology said, "We have strategically shifted our sales mix to higher-tonnage and higher-value mining card models, such as the BoLei Electric Niu 145 mining card. Compared with the more common BoLei Electric Niu 105 model in 2023, this model has a higher average selling price."
In short, although the average price of mining trucks is declining, the company is trying to increase the overall unit price by selling flagship models with larger loads and higher configurations. Compared with the 105-ton mining truck, the 145-ton mining truck is not only an increase in load capacity, but also a comprehensive upgrade in battery capacity, wire-controlled chassis complexity, and autonomous driving computing power requirements. This "upward breakthrough" in product structure is Bolei Technology's means to maintain high revenue growth and stable gross profit margin in the downward cycle of industry average prices.
However, overall, the smart car business with the largest revenue contribution is not the sector with the highest gross profit margin. In the first nine months of 2025, the gross profit margins of the smart car, smart mining and smart transportation businesses were 16.1%, 48.9% and 3.6% respectively.
Revenue from the largest customer accounts for 65%
An episode is that when Bolei Technology was founded, it did not directly target the autonomous driving mining truck track. In 2015, Boradium Technology established a limited liability company in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, and launched an intelligent inspection system for photovoltaic power stations. In 2018, it cooperated with molybdenum and tungsten manufacturers to build China's first electric self-driving mining truck fleet. In 2020, it will build an unmanned mining truck production base with its partners.
The customers of Bolei Technology are mainly mining service companies, mine owners, mining truck OEMs and leasing companies. According to the prospectus, the company has received orders for over a thousand self-driving mining trucks from leading mining service companies. In 2023, 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025, the revenue from the five largest customers was 63.6 million yuan, 164 million yuan and 308 million yuan respectively, accounting for 91.5%, 96.1% and 97.7% of the total revenue respectively. The revenue proportions of the largest customers were 70.4%, 37.9% and 65% respectively.
In the risk factors section, Bolei Technology also mentioned its reliance on large customers, saying, "Given the nature of our business, the majority of our annual revenue comes from a small number of customers."
Angel investor Guo Tao told a reporter from the Beijing Business Daily, "In the short term, large customers can bring stable orders and revenue and help companies quickly ramp up production, but over-reliance will lead to a weakening of bargaining power. If customers reduce purchases or change cooperation, it will directly impact revenue. However, the core risk of a company's development depends more on the match between technology iteration capabilities and industry demand. If mining truck autonomous driving technology is subverted, or mining intelligent transformation progress is not as expected, even if customers are dispersed, companies may still face a survival crisis."
Whether it is purely electric or focusing on its own brand of mining trucks, Bolei Technology has not yet perfected its business model. The company's adjusted net losses in 2023 and 2024 were 32.281 million yuan and 60.428 million yuan respectively. In the first three quarters of last year, the figures were 53.304 million yuan, a year-on-year expansion of 17.9%.
