In addition, a global provider of autonomous driving software solutions announced a long-term partnership with truck brands MAN, Navistar and Scania to boost the global hype for autonomous long-haul trucks.
TRATON SE, headquartered in Munich, is the parent and holding company of TRATON GROUP, one of the world’s leading brands of advertising vehicles. The group’s product portfolio includes trucks, buses and light advertising vehicles, sold through the brands mentioned above, such as Volkswagen Truck.
Plus offerings include next-generation crash protection systems, a highly automated driver-driven PlusDrive(R) and a driverless SuperDrive. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, and operates in the United States, Europe, and Australia. .
The SAE Level Four driverless charging solution will be produced and sold directly through Scania, MAN and Navistar to its freight forwarding customers. The use case will be in center-to-center operations, i. e. , operations only on limited access highways.
Plus will deliver its Level Four SuperDrive software through its Open Autonomy platform. Individual OEMs will take responsibility for procuring the hardware and defining the overall product. Plus has entered into a separate contract with each of the three truck brands for the launch. of the products.
Big Boy Truck Builders
TRATON is one of the world’s largest truck brands and will promote 281,000 trucks in 2023. Sales were split between Scania (91,000), MAN (83,000), Navistar (75,000) and Volkswagen Trucks. Only Daimler Trucks is higher in terms of sets sold. , with 526,000 units sold last year. During the same period, PACCAR sold approximately 200,000 trucks and Volvo Trucks approximately 150,000 trucks. (Unit sales data for Iveco, Hyundai Motor, or Volkswagen Trucks is not readily available. )
Today’s news fills a void in the career of AV heavyweights. In recent years, Daimler, PACCAR and Volvo Group have consolidated their marketing partners for automated driving systems (ADS). But Navistar was the first to worry among OEMs, partnering with ADS Truck. developer TuSimple in 2020. TRATON acquired Navistar in 2021.
Things will go well until the end of 2022, when TuSimple had technical and control issues and necessarily missed the ball. Navistar ended the partnership with TuSimple in December 2022.
Fifteen months later, the corporations claim that the joint progression between the TRATON GROUP and Plus brands was already underway last year, and that the collaboration goes back even further.
Don’t waste your time. . .
Today, the partners also revealed that trucks from the TRATON GROUP brands equipped with SuperDrive Level 4 Plus are already being tested on public roads in Europe and the United States with an on-board protective driver.
The corporations say they will pilot advertising operations with fleets later this year in preparation for the start of mass production and large-scale global advertising rollout.
“We view autonomy as a key component in delivering a full diversity of safe, effective and sustainable shipping solutions that can be tailored to the customer’s expressed needs, which is further enhanced through our partnership with Plus,” said Peter Hafmar, Vice President. and Head of Autonomous Solutions at Scania, leading the coordination of autonomous responses for TRATON GROUP.
“Plus is very pleased that our industry-leading autonomous driving software has been selected for TRATON GROUP’s impressive portfolio of accredited and trusted global advertising vehicle brands across Scania, MAN and Navistar,” said Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus. “Together, we will drive global advertising for tier four autonomous trucks and bring safer and more sustainable transportation responses to market. “
“By expanding our program from center to autonomous center, we are in a leading position to deliver autonomous responses to our customers,” Hafmar added, referring to the usual technique of driverless road truck suppliers to set up “transfer centers. “”Close to the highway exits. Trailers pulled by an AV truck on the highway are transferred from AV tractors to human-driven tractors to complete your adventure through cities and commercial sites.
Texas & Sweden Road Tests
Navistar and Plus are lately testing their L4 autonomous trucks on the San Antonio-Dallas freight corridor in Texas and will expand them to other routes in the Texas Triangle and I-10 corridor. Commercial deployments will expand along strategic U. S. corridors. In the U. S. , they say.
In Europe, tests are recently underway at an address between Södertälje and Nyköping in Sweden, and pilot operations with consumers in European countries are planned in 2024.
The corporations say they will pilot commercial autonomous truck operations with fleets and then launch mass production and large-scale global advertising deployment. This is a technique for other OEMs with complex ADS associations for trucks.
When will the first TRATON GROUP products be marketed?The timeline for the launch of an L4 truck product is not stated in the announcement, but Kerrigan noted that the launch of the L4 trucks “will take place at a competitive time with other leaders. “
It also strengthens the OEM portfolio
This is Lfour de Plus’ first partnership with a major OEM. In 2021, the company partnered with IVECO to commercialize Tier 2 and 4 truck products.
Since last year, tests have been carried out in Germany with IVECO trucks supplied with the PlusDrive L2 formula. Not long ago, Plus announced that DM-Drogerie Markt, Europe’s largest retail pharmacy chain and logistics provider DSV would launch an automated transport pilot mission in Germany starting in the first half of this year. An IVECO heavy-duty truck equipped with PlusDrive will drive on a DSV road to transport products from DM-Drogerie Markt in Germany’s Baden-Württemberg-Hessen region.
Two Equals Four
According to Plus, L2 PlusDrive is necessarily Plus’s L4 formula running on a truck with no L4 redundancy, so it requires human supervision.
In an interview, Kerrigan reiterated what he and Plus have been saying for years, namely that the implementation of their L2 formula provides much-needed insights for their L4 progression processes. Under pressure that today’s announcement “is not a tipping point, we have been consistent in this technique for five years. “He added that with PlusDrive, his trucks have traveled “over a million miles” through the lower 48 states in all weather conditions.
It’s a deal
According to a recent analyst estimate, shared with me privately, the overall market available for L4 road transport will reach $160 billion by 2035.
To meet this market demand, it is highly significant to see the fourth of the four North American truck brands as an ADS supplier in an effort to temporarily move into product launch.
It’s now clearer than ever that truck fleet consumers accessing L4 through their familiar OEM channel are ready for the norm among OEMs active in L4. Plus’ modular technique allows OEMs to split hardware and software, which aligns with automotive industry trends.
In addition, he is part of a very exclusive club, as he has two OEM components of L4 trucks in his pocket. And its operations in the U. S. , as well as in Europe and Australia (in collaboration with Transurban) are distinctive.
Today’s announcement that TRATON trucks will be conducting L4 road trials in Europe this year with SuperDrive is the first European L4 activity that I am aware of in this existing marketing phase. That said, I wonder if other L4 players did the same, keeping a low level. profile. As autonomous driving regulations evolve around the world, gamers are struggling to be prepared.
But it’s still in the U. S. where the commercialization of driverless trucks will take the top spot. Navistar, with Plus, is back in the game. The list goes on. The cylinders are firing. The lidars are spinning. And the wheels of investment, progress, and deployment are turning.
Disclosure: Richard Bishop is a strategic and/or shareholder of Plus and Transurban.