Aurora Innovation has christened the nation’s first commercial autonomous freight route between Dallas and Houston. But its timing could have been better.
“With this corridor’s launch, we’ve defined, refined, and validated the framework for the expansion of our network with the largest partner ecosystem in the autonomous trucking industry,” Sterling Anderson, an Aurora co-founder and chief product officer, said in a news release.
The choice of the Interstate 45 route was expected. Aurora has...
The California Senate joined the state Assembly in overwhelmingly voting to ban heavy-duty driverless trucks on state highways. Whether to sign or veto the bill is now up to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The government through Newsom’s business office has been critical of Assembly Bill 316, but he has not said what he will do. The former San Francisco mayor is a big technology backer but also courts labor unions, which are the loudest voices behind the legislation.
Essentially, the bill, which passed Monday...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/california-senate-votes-to-ban-driverless-trucks
Driverless trucks likely will be in limited use on some U.S. interstates as soon as late 2024. How they will be maintained between trips is a growing focus for their software developers.
Aurora Innovation appears to be farthest along in preparing for inspections, fueling maintenance and automated landing and launch of autonomous Class 8 trucks. An unremarkable frontage road location in Palmer, Texas, south of Dallas is being transformed into a terminal capable of doing for autonomous trucks...
TUCSON, Ariz. — TuSimple Holdings needs closure on a raft of investigations before it can reclaim technology leadership in the nascent autonomous trucking industry. But a balance sheet with nearly $1 billion is a big advantage.
“Our runway is three years, and that’s excluding any strategic decision on China,” TuSimple Chief Financial Officer Eric Tapia told FreightWaves in an interview at the company’s testing operations site. “China’s a great business. They have some interesting initiatives...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/with-1b-in-the-bank-reputationally-dinged-tu-simple-looks-ahead
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Autonomous trucks see and interpret their environment through massive amounts of computer power....
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/the-road-to-autonomous-trucking-tms-integration
Kodiak Robotics and Werner Enterprises hauled autonomous freight four times round-trip between Dallas and Lake City, Florida, over 152 consecutive hours, the latest evidence that robots could replace human drivers on unpopular long-haul routes.
With commercialization of driverless trucks still years away, Kodiak slipped its trained safety drivers in and out of the Peterbilt 579 cabs as the hours-of-service clock ticked down to the 11-hour limit of operation. The trucks didn’t need a break....
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/as-autonomous-trucking-routes-get-longer-who-does-the-supervising
TuSimple co-founder and CEO Xiaodi Hou on Tuesday responded to concerns from financial analysts on potential repercussions of a safety investigation following an April 6 crash involving one of its driverless trucks.
“This was an incident with a correctable flaw, not a material change to our business model,” Hou asserted during the company’s second-quarter analyst call. “As the CEO of TuSimple, I take responsibility for it.”
The accident and resulting potential safety setback for autonomous trucks...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/tusimple-sees-no-change-in-business-model-in-wake-of-safety-probe
Just five days after Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed into law a bill approving driverless vehicles, Gatik and Walmart announced on Thursday plans to deploy autonomous trucks in the state.
Kelly signed Senate Bill 313 into law last Friday. It had passed the Kansas House on a 75-44 vote and the Senate 23-17. The law was backed by both Gatik and Walmart (NYSE: WMT). Kansas is the 25th state to pass legislation that enables fully autonomous vehicles to operate on public roads.
The companies did not...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/gatik-walmart-to-begin-autonomous-truck-pilot-in-kansas
For a young public company known for transparency, TuSimple Holdings’ sudden replacement of Cheng Lu as CEO with co-founder Xiaodi Hou showed that unexpected moves rattle investors. And shaken investors sell stock.
A lot of stock.
TuSimple is trading near its all-time low. For the week, it was down 32.65%, with most of the damage on Thursday, the day of the announcement..
The timing and immediate execution appeared to be a PR blunder with volatile markets already spooked by inflation fears and...
Autonomous trucking software developer TuSimple will make driverless runs permanent as it gets closer to commercializing autonomous trucking on the nation’s freeways.
“Driver-out proves we are feature complete, which means our autonomous driving system has all the capabilities required for true driver operations along commercial routes. And that it is able to safely mitigate or contain all the edge cases during operations,” CEO Cheng Lu told analysts on the company’s Q4 earnings call after...