Texas and Germany have been the focus for Robotruck trials on public roads, due to the favorable regulatory environment. But even here, the trucks still have to have a safety driver in most cases, for example to comply with existing emergency/safety rules in the case of a breakdown. There are many more shuttle, bus and delivery van trials that we do not list here and many of those are in closed environments, such as ports, airports, campuses etc.
The leading autonomous trucking companies are still far behind robotaxis in terms of driverless miles driven, with Aurora, for example, just surpassing 20K miles.
Beyond the market for full Robotrucks, there is also a significant market for sensors and ADAS for active safety in the class 8 truck market. In North America, for example, around 300K new trucks are sold a year. Bendix just announced a collaboration with Aeva to integrate LiDAR into its future Fusion™ ADAS platform, which is already available on most class 8 truck platforms. One focus of the system is to improve PAEB and nighttime collision mitigation, which is one area that existing camera/radar systems have limitations.
