Many companies are shifting focus from R&D to making driverless models work at scale.
Driverless trucks are already heading out to the highway, as shipping companies increasingly look to autonomous technology to meet rising demand for goods. The focus now: determining the best way to hand off trailers from machine to human.
Auto visionaries’ depiction of the city streets of 2021, full of self-driving cars seamlessly communicating while passengers worked and/or dozed, was always a bit optimistic. As the technological hurdles have become clearer—and higher— companies and urban planners have pushed back their timelines and toned down their adjectives.
But the promise of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is already coming to fruition—in trucking, the often-underappreciated network of tractor-trailers across the country. Given the size of the opportunity, many shippers and fleets are asking, “When will autonomous trucking be available?” We believe the more important question to ask is, “Where might autonomous trucking be available first, and how would it proliferate?”.
