Autonomous Transport

Happy Friday everyone! Welcome to the Autonomous Platforms of the Future Newsletter, designed to inform you about future game changing products, technologies, and platforms. This week I'll be focusing on highlighting Autonomous Transport solutions and an innovative start-up company piloting production this year.

How many of you all have pictured those large semi-trucks being operated autonomously? As the future starts to take shape for urban cities, this will be the norm for the freight transport logistics industry. I'm excited to provide further context on what new start-up companies are developing to enable this technology to be a reality for all.

In society right now, there are four major modes of transport in the logistics industry: Air, Road, Sea, and Rail. Now the most commonly used freight transport modes are sea, followed by road, and then rail. Now the main reason for sea being ranked first is that it is also the cheapest mode to transport cargo. However, it is also the slowest for commercial use.

As I dive into more about the trucking industry, it will b good to note that this mode of freight transport has seen a lot of transformation in recent years. First, there were the birth of electric semi-trailer trucks first introduced by Elon Musk's Tesla Semi, which were delivered starting in 2023. With more vehicles moving to autonomous driving, the same technology can be applied for semi-trucks. The reason this is especially important for the logistics industry is that it will allow more useability for this transport mode for inland freight transportations to drive quicker delivery turnaround time.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 9.8% of vehicles involved in fatal crashes are large semi-trucks. This is the unfortunate result of the use of these larger vehicles for the logistics industry. With driver error being the #1 reason for semi-truck accidents, it makes sense that more emphasis needs to be placed on driver training. Along with training, there has been the need to identity more environmentally friendly solutions for our inland cargo transportations.

The main reasons the trucking industry is considered high risk by many are due to driver shortages, fuel cost increases, demand, globalization, and the fact that payments come in at 30, 60, and 90 days after job completion. In addition to these, the trucking business has slowed recently due to ongoing supply chain disruptions along with an unstable economic environment that has led to a decrease in freight demand. For these reasons above, an all electric, autonomous semi-truck solution would be advantageous for industry and consumers.

Next, I'd like to highlight a great startup company that's making waves in the Autonomous cargo transport industry. Their technology is amazing and if I were CEO, I'd be heavily investing in their future products. 

Now lets discuss in more detail Plus.

Plus develops self-driving trucks technology to enable large-scale commercialization of autonomous transport. Plus is a global provider of highly automated driving and fully autonomous driving solutions with headquarters in Silicon Valley, California, and operations in the U.S. and Germany.

Named by Forbes as one of America’s Best Startup Employers and by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, Plus’s open autonomy technology platform is already powering vehicles in commercial use today. Working with leading vehicle manufacturers, fleets, and other technology companies globally, Plus is helping to make driving safer, more comfortable, and more sustainable. Plus has received a number of industry awards and distinctions for its transformative technology and business momentum from Fast Company, Forbes, Insider, Consumer Electronics Show, AUVSI, and others.

The company was founded in California in 2016, by a group of Stanford Ph.D. graduates (David Liu, Shawn Kerrigan, Hao Zheng, and Tim Daly) who decided to use their knowledge of artificial intelligence to develop self-driving technology for the long-haul trucking industry.

For a cool video of the technology in action, see below link.

Plus has raised a total of $520M in funding over 4 rounds since 2018. The latest venture investment round concluded March 1, 2021 and raised $100.2M for Series C.

Company revenue is estimated at $8M for 2023.

Backed by 18 leading investors, Plus is primed to take a huge step forward for growth in the coming years. With the mission to make transportation safer and greener, the company's growth globally will mark a significant milestone global ecofriendly transport solutions.

Recently, the autonomous driving software specialist, Plus, has announced a long-term partnership with several commercial fleet developers under the Traton Group, including MAN, Scania, and Navistar, to deploy Level 4 autonomous trucks globally. Public road testing is already underway on in the US and Europe. The companies will pilot commercial operations with fleets in 2024, then start series production and global commercial deployment at scale.

For even more information about this company's products, check out their website below.

As the Urban City 2.0 infrastructure takes shape in the next 5-10 years, a lot of really great technologies will lessen greenhouse gas emissions, curb fatalities, increase travel speeds, reduce road congestions, and advance autonomous technologies. Some of the technologies that will be operational are delivery drones, underground roads, flying taxis, maglev trains, hyperloops, and driverless automobiles. Autonomous semi-trucks will be in this mix of new age transport modes to advance society for the better.

In my opinion, I think this technology should be welcomed with open arms by the general public since its aimed at delivering more sustainable, eco-friendly solutions for freight logistics. We've seem global warming become more prevalent these days with the extreme weather swings and intense storms in the past few years. Preserving our world should be paramount to society and autonomous, electic semi-trucks will go along way in reduce the amount of greenhouse emissions coming from the current fleet of semi-trucks. I love what Plus is doing for creating an open Autonomy platform that can be customized to integrate with any automobile/truck OEM. Let's see how quickly legislature can catch up to make this technology a reality for everyone to use.

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