If electric trucks aren't enough leading-edge technology for you, Daimler Truck on Tuesday unveiled its next generation for the next generation: an autonomous electric truck.
Based on a production battery electric Freightliner eCascadia, the autonomous Freightliner eCascadia technology demonstrator is a first-of-its-kind vehicle equipped with Torc Robotic's autonomous driving software and its latest Level 4 sensor and compute technology. SAE Level 4 autonomous driving is defined as "highly automated" under limited circumstances.
The plan is for the truck to drive autonomously between freight centers along U.S. highway corridors, and by identifying synergies between zero emissions and autonomous infrastructure in a future scenario, Daimler Truck hopes the charging infrastructure and autonomous freight hubs could be combined to charge and load simultaneously.
"We're starting to think about those kinds of challenges today," said Head of Daimler Truck's Global Autonomous Technology Group Joanna Buttler, "so we'll have solutions ready tomorrow."
The truck itself is a research and advanced engineering project, but has the potential to evolve into a modular, scalable platform that is propulsion agnostic, said Buttler.
Alongside Daimler subsidiary Torc, Butler said the company is making progress toward introducing SAE Level 4 autonomous trucks in the U.S. by 2027, targeting autonomous trucks with conventional propulsion technology for first market launch. The autonomous eCascadia demonstrator provides a peek at future autonomous use cases, including shorter, repeatable routes – use cases that total 60 billion annual miles and more than 100 billion freight tons, Butler estimated – with the use of zero-emissions infrastructure, but depending on the application, future autonomous trucks could be powered by hydrogen-based systems.
DTNA has seen a more than 80% adoption rate of its base safety system, Butler said, and the eCascadia comes standard with the Detroit Assurance suite of safety systems, including Active Brake Assist 5. In the autonomous Freightliner eCascadia technology demonstrator, the autonomous sensor suite and computing power currently being tested on the autonomous diesel Cascadia, is packaged to fit the smaller day cab configuration of the battery electric eCascadia for the first time.
