Kodiak Robotics has delivered its first commercial driverless freight.
Atlas Energy Solutions and Kodiak Robotics on May 2 completed their first driverless delivery of frac sand in West Texas’s Permian Basin. The 21-mile route, Kodiak told CCJ, was on Atlas’s existing infrastructure of private lease roads. The duration of the haul was two hours and seven minutes. The average speed was 10 mph (the average traffic speed on the private lease roads is under 20 mph), and the max speed was 15 mph.
Atlas CEO John Turner said the hot and dry climate in the Permian Basin makes it one of the world’s most challenging environments for truck drivers, but he noted the Kodiak Driver is well equipped to handle driving through harsh conditions, including dust storms that impact visibility and extreme heat.
“The Permian Basin’s expansive private lease road network, which expands across the Delaware and Midland Basins, is an ideal environment in which to introduce autonomous trucking in North America,” said Atlas Chief Supply Chain Officer Chris Scholla. “With average traffic speeds of under 20 MPH on these large swaths of private roads, we can safely deliver a more reliable last-mile solution to our customers in the Permian Basin. This truly represents a step-change in oilfield logistics.”
Early next year, Atlas plans to launch commercial operations using its first two trucks equipped with the Kodiak Driver. Under the agreement, Kodiak will provide its technology to Atlas via a driver-as-a-service licensing agreement. Atlas will own the trucks, and Kodiak will provide the Kodiak Driver’s fully-redundant, platform-agnostic, hardware and software stack designed for scalable driverless deployment. Kodiak will also provide operational support services, including remote monitoring from its operations center in Lancaster, Texas.
“Deploying driverless trucks with Atlas marks the beginning of a new era for autonomous vehicles,” said Don Burnette, Kodiak founder & CEO. "Our partnership with Atlas will make us the first autonomous semi-truck company to establish commercial driverless operations, and the first company to make autonomous trucking a real business. We look forward to scaling our trucking product not only in the Permian Basin, but also over-the-road.”
