From TowTimes.com - Daimler Trucks and Waymo Partner on Developing Autonomous Trucks

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Daimler Trucks and Waymo have signed a broad, global, strategic partnership to deploy autonomous SAE L4 technology. Their initial effort will combine Waymo’s automated driver technology with a version of Daimler’s Freightliner Cascadia to enable autonomous driving.

Waymo brings over a decade of experience building the World’s Most Experienced Driver, having driven over 20 million miles on public roads across 25 U.S. cities and 15 billion miles in simulation. Daimler Trucks North America, Daimler Trucks’ U.S. subsidiary, parent company of the Freightliner brand and the U.S. market leader in commercial vehicle manufacturing, provides their experience in developing state of the art Class 8 vehicles.

Both Waymo and Daimler Trucks share the common goal of improving road safety and efficiency for fleet customers.

The autonomous Freightliner Cascadia truck, equipped with the Waymo Driver, will be available to customers in the U.S. in the coming years. Waymo and Daimler Trucks will investigate expansion to other markets and brands in the near future.

Martin Daum, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG and Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG: “As leader of our industry, Daimler Trucks is the pioneer of automated trucking. In recent years, we have achieved significant progress on our global roadmap to bringing series-produced highly automated trucks to the road. With our strategic partnership with Waymo as the leader in autonomous driving, we are taking another important step towards that goal.”

Roger Nielsen, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG, President and CEO of Daimler Trucks North America LLC: “The combination of increased road freight volumes and the need and vision of fleet operators for highly automated trucks, is what fuels our pursuit of innovation.”

John Krafcik, CEO, Waymo: “We have the highest regard for Daimler’s engineering skills and broad global truck product portfolio, and so we look forward to scaling the Waymo Driver, together with our new partner, to improve road safety and logistics efficiency on the world’s roadways.”

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