Autonomous driving tech company TuSimple has announced that Union Pacific Railroad will become its first customer on its fully automated trucking route in Arizona.
Union Pacific, which has been in operation since the time of the American Civil War, will use TuSimple’s platform to coordinate the freight shipment and move goods between trains and trucks, improving first- and last-mile efficiency between Tucson and Phoenix.
Work is scheduled to begin this spring with TuSimple carrying freight on driverless trucks for Union Pacific, using its autonomous vehicle technology to deliver goods to their destination faster and more cost-effectively.
“Partnering with TuSimple allows us to extend our operations beyond our rail hubs and serve our customers faster and more efficiently,” says Kenny Rocker, Executive Vice President – Marketing and Sales, Union Pacific.
“This groundbreaking autonomous driving technology and our partnership provide us a significant opportunity to scale the technology in our network, proactively reducing global supply chain congestion.”
TuSimple completed the world’s driverless semi-truck run back in December and has completed an additional six fully autonomous runs since, covering more than 550 cumulative miles on open public roads. There was nobody in the trucks, nor was there any teleoperation or traffic intervention.
TuSimple also says that the runs were conducted in various roadway conditions, including dense early-evening traffic and back-to-back runs on the same night.
“Our repeatable and scalable ‘Driver Out’ operations marks a significant inflection point in our company’s history. We are the world’s first to complete all of the features of AV trucking technology,” says Cheng Lu, President, and CEO, TuSimple.
“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.”
Moving forward, TuSimple plans to expand the scope of its driverless trucking operations, incorporating new runs and routes. By the end of next year, the company is hoping to have commercially viable driverless paid freight operations across the sunbelt.
Keyword: TuSimple to Run Autonomous Trucks for Union Pacific Railroad