Waymo Halts Autonomous Truck Work To Focus On Self-Driving Taxis

Waymo had been creating a particular autonomous truck platform to assist revolutionize the trucking trade. In 2020, it started a collaboration with Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) to equip the Freightliner Cascadia truck with Stage 4 autonomy. In a press release, Waymo  says that, with its elevated concentrate on Waymo Driver, the corporate will “push again the timeline on our industrial and operational efforts on trucking, in addition to most of our technical improvement.” Nonetheless, in that very same assertion, Waymo makes it clear that it’s going to proceed working with Daimler on an autonomous trucking platform.

By ramping up its efforts to make its Driver a mainstream, profitable enterprise, Waymo is hoping it can then be in a greater place by having each the assets and technical groundwork to do the identical for autonomous trucking. “Advancing Waymo Driver capabilities,” Waymo states on its firm weblog, “particularly on freeway, will immediately translate to trucking and profit its improvement efforts.”

Waymo Driver may also function an early guinea pig for presidency regulation in terms of self-driving automobiles sharing public roads. Autonomous vans not but absolutely developed will have the ability to reap the benefits of no matter insights and developments Waymo Driver automobiles make in regard to that extraordinarily difficult regulatory panorama. “We proceed to see a big future industrial alternative for our trucking resolution alongside different industrial purposes of the Waymo Driver,” states Waymo. Self-driving taxis aren’t killing autonomous trucking, however serving to them come to fruition. It might simply take just a little longer for self-driving vans to hit the highway.