Spring ploughing is in full swing across Northeast China, and summer grain crops are soon to enter the harvest period. Farming waits for no one, making reliable agricultural machinery support all the more critical. On May 5, Morning News, a flagship program of CCTV, aired an 8-minute special report under the series Q1 Economic Review. It focused on the dual efforts of R&D teams at Weichai LOVOL Intelligent Agriculture: optimizing production workflows for agricultural machinery and upgrading equipment with smarter technologies. Every data analysis and simulation test conducted in the labs lays a solid foundation for bumper harvests.
From "Workers Search for Tires" to "Tires Automatically Reach Machines"
Smart Factory Boosts Intelligent Production of Farm Machinery
Reporters visited Weichai LOVOL's smart factory, home to China’s first automated vertical warehouse system for tractor tires. The facility can store more than 300 types of tires, which are delivered to production lines round the clock via fully automated transportation.
Put into operation last year, this system integrates automated vertical warehousing and intelligent distribution. Upon receiving production orders, depalletizing robots identify and fetch required tires with the help of vision algorithms and place them into the warehouse. Automated conveyor systems then deliver tires to assembly stations on schedule in line with orders and production plans, with all procedures running simultaneously without mutual interference.
Tractors are the most widely used and diversified type of agricultural machinery. The R&D team ran tens of thousands of simulations to optimize access routes for over 300 tire models on the factory’s simulation platform. After one year of development and implementation, the system achieved a major transformation: tires now travel to tractors automatically, replacing the traditional way of manual tire retrieval.
Staff explained that the tire vertical warehouse solves two major pain points. First, it doubles operational efficiency. Second, it enables automatic outbound delivery matching production orders. The warehouse handles over 300 tire variants, ranging from 60 centimeters to more than two meters in diameter and dozens of kilograms to 400–500 kilograms in weight, fully adapting to mixed-model production.
The tire warehouse is just one example of how LOVOL’s R&D achievements are applied in smart manufacturing. Efficiency improvements can be seen across all production links. During the lunch break, reporters noticed more than 50 material delivery shuttles traveling along designated tracks to transport parts accurately. Powered by self-developed real-time scheduling algorithms, the system dynamically plans travel routes and collision avoidance for each shuttle. The vehicles pick up components from warehouses automatically and deliver them to assembly stations via optimal paths. This eliminates the tedious work of manual part retrieval and checking, cuts down material searching time greatly, and prevents assembly errors and omissions, keeping production lines running steadily and efficiently.
From "Dusty Workplaces" to "Mobile Homes"
Human-centered Upgrades for LOVOL Intelligent Farm Machinery
Every refinement of LOVOL intelligent agricultural machinery, from thoughtful cab designs to core technological breakthroughs, reflects care for operators and support for farming work.
Reporters found many user-friendly upgrades on the cab of the popular LOVOL Grain God wheeled harvester. A foldable bed is newly installed for operators to rest during cross-regional operations, alongside a compact refrigerator. The fresh air air conditioning system delivers cool ventilation all day long. Thanks to optimized air pressure design, dust and crop residues are kept out, maintaining a clean and tidy cabin environment.
While cabin comfort is visible progress, China’s first mass-produced CVT tractor represents cutting-edge core technology behind the scenes. This achievement is built on over a decade of data accumulation and countless bench tests in LOVOL’s laboratories. Researchers developed the engine and transmission as an integrated whole. The tractor features no traditional gear shifts or jolts, delivering a driving experience as smooth as an automatic car.
A person in charge of LOVOL Tractor Research Institute introduced: "This model supports stepless speed regulation from 0 to 40 kilometers per hour, bringing superior shifting experience and riding comfort. Compared with conventional tractors, its overall working efficiency rises by over 30%, while fuel consumption drops by 10%."
From "Individual Operation" to "Networked Collaboration"
LOVOL AI Large Model Makes Debut for the Three Summer Campaign
Rapeseed and wheat are being harvested in parts of Southwest China, and the major wheat-producing areas along the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain will soon usher in peak harvesting. Large-scale cross-regional mobility of agricultural machinery is coming. How to avoid equipment congestion, empty runs and missed farming schedules?
The LOVOL intelligent service command platform displays real-time operation status of thousands of farm machines and national crop conditions on one screen. According to the head of LOVOL Customer Service & Aftermarket Division: "Bright markers on the map indicate areas with intensive cross-regional operations. We can view the harvested acreage and machine quantity in regions such as Meishan, Sichuan, and conduct year-on-year data analysis down to county and district levels."
Integrating the Internet of Vehicles, remote sensing and meteorological systems, the platform realizes predictive management instead of passive maintenance after breakdowns. Real-time field data including engine water temperature, rotational speed and fault codes are transmitted back to laboratories, providing authentic operating data for next-generation product R&D.
Equipped with various sensors, intelligent farm machines conduct real-time soil monitoring in fields and transmit data on soil conditions and crop growth. Based on such field data, together with meteorological and hydrological information, LOVOL has developed an AI large model, which will be officially put into use for the first time during this year’s Three Summer campaign to support scientific decision-making for farmers.
The director of LOVOL Intelligent Agriculture Research Institute said: "The AI large model acts as a digital brain for farmland. It integrates data on soil, weather, crop growth and machine operations to deliver real-time and precise farming solutions. Based on regional harvesting progress, we can deploy agricultural machinery, services and spare parts more accurately and achieve refined scheduling."
Upgrading Intelligent Farm Machinery to Empower Rural Development
The Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan calls for high-quality development of agricultural equipment, targeting an overall mechanization rate of over 80% for crop farming, management and harvesting by 2030. Statistics show that the promotion system for fully unmanned farming technologies has driven the sales of 1.15 million sets of intelligent equipment including driverless tractors and rice transplanters, with a total unmanned working area reaching 510 million mu.
Focusing on boosting yields, reducing losses, improving quality, cutting costs and raising efficiency, intelligent farm machinery like LOVOL’s has lifted operational efficiency by 20% in pilot projects. Labor costs have been slashed by up to 67%, greatly improving working conditions and easing labor intensity. China will also launch an "AI + Agriculture" initiative this year, steering agricultural production from experience-based farming to data-driven cultivation.