If you're on the road in Arizona and you see a truck with no driver, brace yourself to see more, because they apparently are going to be the wave of the future.
TuSimple's vehicles have driven more than 550 autonomous miles on the Interstate 10 corridor between Tucson and Phoenix, the company said in a recent news release on bizjournals.com.
TuSimple has made a deal with Union Pacific Railroad to haul freight for it with driverless vehicles along that route, the company said in a recent press release on its website. The contract deliveries will begin this spring.
TuSimple completed its first driver-out run in late December, the first step toward full commercialization of the autonomous vehicle (AV) technology.
With multiple runs on the 110-mile stretch, the driverless vehicles have made the trip with no teleoperation or traffic intervention, and they have done it under various road and traffic conditions, including heavy traffic and back-to-back runs.
"We are the world's first to complete all of the features of AV trucking technology," Cheng Lu, president and CEO of TuSimple, said in the press release. "We are proud of our on-time delivery of this historic milestone and are excited to shift our full focus to commercializing our ground-breaking technology on an accelerated timeline."