Are Autonomous Trucks the Trucking Industry’s Future Heroes?

TuSimple is a global, autonomous truck company. The company currently has 11 autonomous trucks operated daily in the United States. Additionally, due to increasing demand, the company is set to almost quadruple the number of operating autonomous vehicles by June. Increasing demand from many large contracted customers is a big sign that their M.O is working. They aim to be the leading autonomous trucking company in the world. As well as, TuSimple’s goal to change the way the trucking industry operates. They already conduct 3-5 routes per day, per customer in Arizona. That’s huge when it comes to autonomous vehicles. There’s no chance that each route will be free from random events such as accidents or sudden braking. Furthermore, these aren’t just highway trips; these trips also require local street driving as well.

TuSimple is confident. TuSimple is so confident in its technology that other, larger companies are placing large amounts of faith on them. For example, Cummins Inc. is going to start working with TuSimple. They will be integrating their powertrain technology with TuSimple’s autonomous systems.

"Exactly one year after debuting our prototype system at CES 2018, we're now running up to five commercial trips a day in Arizona, expanding our fleet and moving quickly toward our goal of creating the first commercial self-driving truck," said Dr. Xiaodi Hou, Founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer, TuSimple. "We are making tremendous progress towards the commercialization of our technology and trucking ecosystem with key Tier 1 partners like Cummins. The viability and power of our autonomous truck solutions is being proven daily on highways and local streets."

What exactly makes TuSimple so special, anyway? Among the myriad of companies that are trying to cash in on the growing autonomous vehicle movement, what sets them apart? Well, the answer lies with their camera-centric perception solutions. TuSimple trucks have a vision range of 1,000 meters. That’s much, much better than any other camera perception system in other autonomous vehicles. To illustrate, the majority of other autonomous vehicle systems can only optimally see up to 150 meters. Anything below 300 meters is listed as “low visibility” in most motor vehicle jurisdictions. Additionally, these trucks have 360-degree vision. It’s easy to see why so much faith is placed in these vehicles.

Answering the 3PL Shortage

There is currently a shortage of 50,000 drivers in the trucking industry. Furthermore, this number is expected to increase to 175,000 drivers by the end of 2024. It’s also approaching a 100% turnover rate. Due to all of these preceding factors, autonomous vehicles are expected to create big savings opportunities for companies willing to make use of these systems. How many more large corporations will place faith in these autonomous vehicle companies? It’s difficult to know for certain what will happen in the future, but safe bets can be placed on companies like TuSimple.

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