TuSimple has established a partnership with ZF to develop and commercialize technology for autonomous trucks.
Starsky Robotics founder Stefan Seltz-Axmacher said his autonomous trucks development company is shutting down. "Trucking companies aren’t great technology customers," he said.
Grocers, food retailers, and auto parts stores are contracting with autonomous last-mile delivery services today. Here’s how the business model is evolving in its early stages.
TuSimple has expanded autonomous truck service for current customer UPS to 20 trips per week and has added an additional route between Phoenix, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas.
Penske’s Bill Combs and Waymo’s Charlie Jatt believe the trucking industry can reap the benefits before achieving Level 5 autonomy through repositioning warehouses that are optimized for AVs, employing tele-operations, and adapting automated safety technologies available now.
Daimler Trucks and Torc Robotics are expanding testing of automated truck technology to new public routes in the U.S., with further development and validation efforts to continue in Virginia.
Scania says new positioning technology leveraging the capabilities of the Galileo global navigation satellite system has achieved accuracy down to centimeter-scale levels for autonomous vehicles, allowing tricky maneuvers like merging.
Royal Truck and Equipment develops autonomous platooning technology for vocational and municipal applications such as sweepers, water trucks, line stripers, or maintenance trucks.
Chris Spear, head of the American Trucking Associations, discussed top issues facing trucking, including highway funding, autonomous vehicles, and nuclear verdicts.
Waymo has begun carrying out interstate mapping operations by a fleet of minivans in New Mexico and Texas – a move that is seen by many tech observers as a prelude to long-haul evaluation runs of tractor-trailers under autonomous control.