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ALBUQUERQUE, NM — As self-driving vehicles inch nearer to commercialization, Daimler Truck CEO Martin Daum sees this expertise delivering a spread of advantages to fleet clients and society as a complete.
Throughout an April 12 briefing with reporters and analysts, Daum stated self-driving vehicles would enhance street security, counter the scarcity of drivers within the trucking trade, improve gear utilization and assist meet the rising freight demand.
These extremely automated autos will be capable to function extra safely and exactly than any human driver, he stated, largely as a result of the self-driving system by no means turns into drowsy or distracted and all the time follows the principles of the street.
“The digital pilot is the right pilot, and he is the right pilot on a regular basis,” Daum stated. “It should in the end make our journey a lot safer.”
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Earlier than the top of this decade, the producer intends to introduce SAE Stage 4 vehicles able to working autonomously on particular routes and in sure driverless settings.
Nonetheless, Daum doesn’t see this expertise as a menace to driver jobs.
Slightly than trying to automate all freight lanes, Daimler Truck and its subsidiary Torc Robotics are focusing their efforts on sure stretches of freeway greatest fitted to autonomous operation.
READ MORE: Torc demonstrates progress on the street to autonomous trucking
“If all the things goes completely properly, we may put 6% of American freight in self-driving autos,” Daum stated. “Which means 94% of freight nonetheless wants drivers to be delivered.”
By then, freight volumes will doubtless have grown quicker than the deployment of self-driving vehicles, that means the trade will proceed to want extra drivers, not fewer.
“So for me, it isn’t a menace to the pilots. It isn’t going to place anybody out of labor,” Daum stated. “It is completely mandatory, on the finish of the day, to maintain our economic system going.”
To facilitate the introduction of Tier 4 vehicles, Daimler and Torc are concentrating on hub-to-hub freight routes that primarily contain driving on stretches of freeway fairly than navigating extra advanced site visitors environments in city areas.
This deployment mannequin divides a long-haul expedition into three segments. Within the lengthy part of the center mile, self-driving vehicles would haul trailers on interstate routes between designated logistics facilities positioned alongside the highways. Manually pushed vehicles would proceed to deal with the primary and final phases of the expedition’s journey – from preliminary pickup on the first hub and from the second hub to ultimate supply.
“It’s important. This fills an necessary trade want,” stated Peter Vaughan Schmidt, Head of Daimler Truck’s Autonomous Know-how Group.
Vaughan Schmidt, head of Daimler Truck’s autonomous expertise group, discusses the corporate’s autonomous truck partnerships with Torc Robotics and Waymo. (Seth Clevenger/Transportation Subjects)
To comprehend this imaginative and prescient, Daimler Truck is pursuing a “dual-track technique” by collaborating with two self-driving builders.
Along with its work with Torc, which it acquired in 2019, Daimler Truck additionally established a separate self-driving truck partnership with Waymo, a unit of Alphabet Inc., Google’s mother or father firm, in 2020.
The truckmaker sees the US as the best market to deploy this expertise first, as a result of components corresponding to lengthy stretches of freeway, rising freight demand and a positive regulatory surroundings.
“We have already got in the US – particularly within the West – a fairly sturdy acceptance that the expertise goes to occur,” stated John O’Leary, CEO of Daimler Truck North America.
Some state governments have modified their guidelines to permit builders to check and ultimately deploy self-driving autos.
“That is one of many causes we’re right here in New Mexico and why we’ll Texas as properly,” O’Leary stated.
Over time, the producer hopes to see the emergence of a coherent nationwide regulatory framework for autonomous trucking.
“We actually do not wish to see some kind of patchwork creating,” O’Leary stated.
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