Swedish transport company Einride was an early pioneer in the development of autonomous electric trucks—the company has a cabless autonomous truck that has been running in pilots for several years. However, the company hasn’t put all its electric eggs in the autonomous basket—it operates a large heavy-duty EV charging site in California, and in August it placed an order for 500 Tesla Semis.
Now autonomous trucking is starting to happen. Einride has two of its cabless, driverless electric trucks running scheduled routes with EASE Logistics in Marysville, Ohio. The operations are part of the Truck Automation Corridor Project, a joint effort of the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT), DriveOhio, and the Indiana Department of Transportation. This is EASE’s third autonomous trucking deployment with DriveOhio.
“EASE believes in leading through action and putting innovation to work in real-world operations,” said Peter Coratola Jr, President and CEO of EASE Logistics. “This deployment builds on that commitment while helping advance the adoption of autonomous freight across the transportation industry.”
Einride’s vehicles are capable of SAE Level 4-autonomous mode, meaning that they operate without a human in the cab—a remote operator monitors each truck off-site and can intervene if needed. The trucks run on local public roads, carrying freight between EASE facilities. The deployment is generating operational data on safety, reliability and efficiency that will inform how autonomous freight scales beyond this initial route.
“This deployment reflects the maturity of our purpose-built autonomous stack, combining driverless operation with remote oversight to run safely in real-world operations,” said Henrik Green, CTO at Einride. “Daily operations in Marysville give us the proof points we need to keep expanding autonomous freight across the corridor and beyond.”
Source: Einride
