Autonomous trucking technology makes a splash in Las Vegas

Autonomous trucking technology makes a splash in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS – After years of hype, autonomous trucking providers have begun to deliver on the promise of driverless operations, with companies touting plans for commercial uses. The Manifest conference in Las Vegas featured a diverse group of autonomous vehicle operators, from large players in the truckload space like Torc Robotics to scrappy upstarts like Bot Auto. Autonomous yard operators including Outrider, Forterra and Germany-based Fernride all had a major presence. 

When asked about the timeline, company executives said plans ranged from 2025 to 2027, but the consensus was that the technology itself has matured to such an extent that the next challenge to tackle is how to commercialize it. Torc Robotics highlighted the safety innovations, with CEO Peter Vaughan Schmidt talking about the company’s redundancy systems, which would allow Torc trucks to continue to operate even if a portion of its major systems and subsystems were disabled. Compared to autonomous cars and their commercialized ride-hailing services, autonomous truck makers require greater safety features, as their routes operate on the highway at higher speeds and cannot simply stop on the road compared to an AV taxi which operates in the urban city space. 

Covenant Logistics represented the truckload portion of one of the panels, with COO Dustin Koehl talking about the company’s experiences and industry views toward autonomous trucking. Koehl previously was head of commercialization at Waabi. For trucking companies that may become future customers of the autonomous truck makers, recent news of driver-out operations milestones is encouraging, though more development needs to take place and more questions need to be answered before there’s a meaningful discussion on wholesale adoption of autonomous trucks in large truckload carrier networks.

While autonomous trucks can haul loads, reaching the next milestones involves answering a number of questions, including:

• What are the cost benefits of the trucks compared to trucks that require drivers?
• What lanes will become autonomous?
• How will things like maintenance, breakdowns and liability impact companies that deploy the vehicles?

Xiaodi Hou, CEO and founder of Bot Auto, also spoke about the changes companies will need to implement to make adopting autonomous trucks viable in terms of total cost of ownership. Two concepts – cost per mile and failure rate per mile – will become important as multiple autonomous trucking companies flesh out their capabilities.

Autonomous yard and terminal trucks also made an appearance, with representatives from Outrider, Forterra and Fernride talking on panels. One of their observations on autonomous truck adoption is that it may happen faster in areas like drayage, terminals and yard operations, as AV yard operators say their locations are better suited for early development compared to point to point over the road.

Platform Science completes acquisition of Trimble’s global transportation telematics business units

Platform Science has completed its acquisition of Trimble’s global transportation telematics business units. The deal, first announced in September 2024, involves Trimble’s becoming a shareholder in Platform Science and gaining a seat on Platform Science’s board of directors. The board includes C.R. England, Cummins, Daimler Truck, Paccar, Prologis, RyderVentures and Schneider as strategic investors.

The release notes that “Customers around the globe will soon be able to choose application solutions from Platform Science, Trimble, and numerous partners in a growing catalog without changing hardware through Virtual Vehicle’s expansion.” The Virtual Vehicle is part of an effort to allow users to access various driver, telematics and fleet management software through OEM vehicle architecture or aftermarket hardware.

Trimble retains its Enterprise, Maps, Vision and Transporeon business units. For Trimble, the deal is expected to accelerate growth in those segments. Platform Science is expected to strengthen its open, connected vehicle application platform globally.

Briefly noted …

Pando recently launched its AI Teams for Logistics, a suite of  AI Agents “designed to automate freight procurement, dispatch planning, and freight audit and payment processes for global brands.” One of its selling points is that it shows its reasoning. The Information’s Theo Wayt writes, “When Pando’s agents make a decision — like choosing one parcel delivery option over another, or negotiating a particular price for an ocean freight shipment — they can explain why they made a decision, similarly to how newer large language models like DeepSeek’s R1 and OpenAI’s o3-mini show their reasoning processes.”
HERE Technologies and project44 announced at Manifest an extension to their partnership aimed at enhancing multimodal transportation visibility. The partnership will use HERE’s truck routing, search and geocoding movement capabilities to help project44 customers with traffic-aware routing, truck-specific constraints and legal restrictions.

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