Behind the wheel

Tech fi rms forging ahead with driverless truck platforms

BY JASON CANNON

Driverless technology has lost a lot of industry buzz to electri cation and, more recently, the coronavirus, but trucking’s formerly “it” thing is still plodding along.

Waymo Via – the self-driving subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc. – notes the lack of attention doesn’t re ect the amount of e ort being poured into getting the driver out of a truck.

Waymo kicked o its self-driving truck program in 2017 and two years later launched a local hotshot delivery partnership with AutoNation, picking up spare car parts and delivering to repair shops in the Phoenix area in the company’s driverless-enabled Chrysler Paci ca vans.  is year, the company partnered with UPS Stores in the area to pick up packages and deliver them to a UPS sorting facility.

Lauren Barriere, Waymo’s head of new business development, said the company’s two early shipper partners have been drawn to the service because the Waymo delivery vehicles “can be ordered on demand” in an industry where the e ciency of assets is problematic.  e average industry asset utilization rate is about 50%, with about three hours of dwell time added for many pickups and deliveries, compounded by up to 33% of miles that are driven empty.

Charlie Jatt, Waymo’s trucking commercial lead, said that as the driverless platform matures, the company’s intent isn’t to serve as a liaison between shippers and receivers. Its preference is to become the technology solution for all parties concerned, with a long-term business model that calls for providing “driver as a service.”

Waymo is forging ahead in a driverless segment that in the last two years has lost two one-time major players: Uber and Starsky Robotics. Both companies have shuttered their autonomous truck operations.

However, Waymo’s approach to the segment is somewhat di erent. At least initially, Uber and Starsky were playing simultaneously the role of  eet and technology startup. Waymo rather seeks to partner with OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to have its driverless technology integrated onto the truck and to work with  eets to provide so ware services such as support for mapping and remote  eet assistance.

Jatt said Waymo has been working closely with OEMs,  eets and shipping customers “to develop a business model to enable an already thriving industry rather than disrupt it.”

Waymo kicked o its self-driving truck program in 2017 and two years later launched a local hotshot delivery partnership with AutoNation, picking up spare car parts in its driverlessenabled Chrysler Paci ca vans.

“We want to be a technology provider,” he said. “Not a truck manufacturer. Not a truck  eet. We don’t even want to own and operate the truck assets ourselves.”

Waymo’s technology stack has been in development for more than a decade in the company’s passenger car program. A “big percentage of that, we’re able to use on trucking,” said Boris Sofman, Waymo’s trucking engineering lead.  e company’s technology suite uses a combination of cameras, lidar and radar that has been validated by Waymo’s car program but customized and tweaked to facilitate the unique challenges presented by a 40-ton articulated 75-foot-long vehicle.  e Waymo autonomous platform has driven more than 20 million miles on public roads and 15 billion miles in simulation, but it has driven exactly zero real-world miles without a person in the vehicle.

“All testing happens with drivers in the truck, but we are building toward [full autonomous] technology,” said Vijaysai Patnaik, Waymo’s trucking product lead, who helped found the company’s trucking division in 2017.

This year and next, TuSimple will operate autonomous tractor-trailers on lanes between Arizona and Texas in partnership with four fleets.

“We will remove the human from the cab when it is safe to do so.”

Waymo plans to focus its testing for the rest of this year on shipping corridors in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, having already mapped highways between Phoenix, Dallas, El Paso and Houston, Jatt said.

About 70% of all U.S. freight moves on trucks in about 400 million Class 8 shipments annually, and Waymo is anxious to get in on the trucking segment and tap the 3.7 million trucks on U.S. highways.

Waymo’s deployment model calls for driverless trucks to be used in two potential scenarios: A point-to-point operation between partner facilities close to freeways where an automated truck simply goes to a depot, picks up the load and takes it to its destination, “fully automating its whole journey,” Sofman said; and between transfer hubs where an automated truck could be mixed with traditional trucks and drivers, allowing pickups and handoffs to be made between the two.

But there are hurdles to get there. Autonomous systems are good at repetitive and predictable tasks but can struggle with things “like construction zones or mechanical or software failures,” Patnaik said.

“The fundamentals of autonomous driving, and the challenges you have to solve, we feel coming out of the driverless service in Phoenix, we have a really good compass of what it will take to deploy driverless trucks,” Sofman added.

The passenger car segment is significantly further ahead than its trucking counterpart in the amount of autonomous support spec’d on a vehicle, especially when it comes to redundancy in the event of a system failure. Waymo in late June was named the exclusive global SAE Level 4 autonomy partner for Volvo Car Group. Through the strategic partnership, the companies will work together to integrate the Waymo Driver into an all-new mobility-focused electric vehicle platform for ride-hailing services.

“If you go to an OEM, you cannot buy a (Class 8) truck that has all the safety features necessary to go [fully autonomous] driving without a human in the cab,” Patnaik said. “On the trucking side, the industry is a little bit less mature. [Redundancy] is a key technology enabler that needs to be in place before we can have trucks without anyone inside them.”

Tech lands major partners

Three for-hire carriers and a private fleet have partnered with autonomous truck developer TuSimple to test the company’s self-driving technologies in real-world operations over the next four years.

As part of a plan to build out a geographical network of lanes nationwide, UPS, U.S. Xpress, Penske Truck Leasing and private fleet McLane plan this year to deploy TuSimple’s autonomous truck technology, a system that retrofits onto existing trucks.

This year, the four carriers will operate on highways between Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. That testing network builds on a $95 million round of funding that TuSimple received last February to expand its testing fleet in Arizona and then into Texas.

Testing on those lanes will take place through next year, TuSimple said. Then, in 2022-23, the companies plan to expand the autonomous network with a lane running between Los Angeles and Jacksonville, Florida. Next, in 2023-24, TuSimple intends to expand its network nationwide.

TuSimple said the goal is to make its Level 4 autonomous system commercially viable by 2024. The company also is launching TuSimple Connect, an autonomous operations monitoring system intended to ensure safe operations and allow shipper customers to track their freight in real time.

“Our ultimate goal is to have a nationwide transportation network consisting of mapped routes connecting hundreds of terminals to enable efficient low-cost long-haul autonomous freight operations,” said Cheng Lu, president for TuSimple. “By launching the [network] with our strategic partners, we will be able to quickly scale operations and expand autonomous shipping lanes to provide users access to autonomous capacity anywhere and 24/7 on-demand.”

Navistar International Corp. last month announced it had taken a minority stake in TuSimple as part of an investment by the truck maker into TuSimple’s self-driving technology and after two years of an ongoing technical relationship between the two companies.

Navistar said the goal is to work with TuSimple to co-develop a Level 4 autonomous truck to enter production by 2024.