Strategic partnerships target SAE Level-4 trucks

The parade of strategic partnerships in the autonomous-trucking space continues with Daimler Trucks and Waymo teaming to develop SAE Level-4 trucks. The Oct. 27 announcement followed Navistar and then Traton, which agreed to acquire the remainder of Navistar for $3.7 billion in mid-October, partnering with San Diego-based TuSimple on L4 technology deployment.

The initial effort involves a “unique version” of Daimler's Freightliner Cascadia being equipped with a scaled version of Waymo's automated-driver technology, which has been developed and refined over the past decade since starting as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009. Waymo claims its dubbed “World's Most Experienced Driver” L4 setup has driven more than 20 million miles (32 million km) on public roads across the U.S. and 15 billion miles (24 billion km) in simulation.