Waymo will partner in coming weeks with manufacturer Daimler Truck to put self-driving 18-wheelers on the road, further expanding the technology company’s autonomous testing between Dallas and Houston.
The big rigs will travel between the state’s two largest metro areas on Interstate 45, a corridor that’s become one of the country’s key testing grounds for driverless trucks.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., creates the technology that can be attached to trucks and other vehicles to make them fully autonomous. Its partnership with Daimler began in 2020.
“We’re very excited to share this really big milestone for this trade partnership with Daimler and Waymo,” said Boris Sofman, director of engineering and head of trucking for Waymo. “We knew from the very beginning it would be very critical for us to partner with the right group of experts.”
The Waymo Driver technology is touted as a way to eventually eliminate the need for a human driver. Trucks equipped with it don’t need to stop for bathroom breaks or to sleep overnight, making them a more efficient way of getting goods from one place to another.
Waymo Via is used for transporting commercial goods, and it combines the driving capabilities of the Waymo Driver with the redundant systems of the Daimler trucks. Daimler’s Freightliner Cascadia has been specifically designed for autonomous trucking, with redundant steering and braking systems, as well as increased battery storage to power the autonomous features.
During a virtual roundtable Tuesday, Daimler’s director of engineering, Sumanoharan Narayanan, said the trucks can still steer and brake even after hydraulic failure, a worst-case scenario, because of the design redundancies. The company has also expanded the battery storage from eight to 12 and installed a 48-volt alternator while maintaining 12-volt consumption, meaning the trucks can go even longer on the roads.
“Our partnership with Waymo has given us a unique opportunity to evolve the methodologies to accommodate emerging fields such as autonomy while still preserving our developmental integrity,” Narayanan said.
Daimler’s goal is to develop “a robust, reliable and scalable autonomous-ready Cascadia,” he said.
“And we’re building this vehicle platform so that it’ll seamlessly integrate into the Daimler Truck sales and service network, which is the backbone for our customers today,” Narayanan said.
The trucks are ready for the road after what Waymo and Daimler described as rigorous testing.
“We will be putting the first batch of these trucks into autonomous testing on public freeways in the upcoming weeks across Dallas and Phoenix, and that is an incredible milestone that both teams have been working a number of years toward,” said Waymo’s Sofman.
Waymo partnered with Uber Freight in June to move goods along the I-45 corridor, building on a February partnership on the same route with C.H. Robinson, a company that moves 20 million shipments annually. Waymo also partners with J.B. Hunt and UPS in Texas.
The company opened a trucking hub in Lancaster in June that includes 10 truck bays, diesel fueling stations, six EV charging stations, and 36 workstations. The company has 20 trucks in the Dallas area.
