Self-driving commercial trucks could regularly operate alongside the motoring public on U.S. highways sooner than many may think, particularly as the industry moves beyond prototypes to real-world, on-road testing. However, the shift likely will be gradual and largely dependent on commercial truck OEMs, regulations, and gaining public acceptance.

Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology providers Kodiak Robotics and Waymo have been hauling freight with self-driving Class 8 trucks in the Southwest corridor of the U.S. over the last few years. And they are learning how their autonomous trucks are interacting with some of the busiest traffic environments in the country, as well as what it will take to bring full-scale Level 4 autonomy to commercial trucking. With Level 4 autonomy, drivers can shift safety-critical functions to the vehicle, which operates only if all required conditions are met. Whereas, no driver is required for Level 5 autonomy, which is known as “anytime, anywhere” technology that can drive the vehicle under all conditions.

“We found a tremendous overlap in self-driving technology for passenger cars and how you need to solve the technology problem different for trucking,” explained Charlie Jatt, head of commercialization for trucking at Waymo, during a recent MOVE America virtual panel focused on truck technology and innovation. “For trucks, you have to see farther down the highway to anticipate things sooner and faster.”

Waymo has been operating Peterbilt 579s outfitted with its AV technology in Texas, given the density of freight in the area. The company, owned by Alphabet, also has been testing Class 8 self-driving trucks in Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Testing its autonomous technology on commercial trucks began in 2017 and was conducted with real freight for real customers.

“When we are testing an autonomous truck carrying freight, in a lot of ways, it doesn’t look different than any other truck driving that load; it just happens to be driving autonomously,” Jatt said. “On the surface, you can look at that and say, ‘There isn’t much difference here.’ But when you really peel back the onion and ask what’s going to change when we actually get to that commercially scalable, fully driverless solution that we are focused on, we found that fleets have tons of really good questions about the downstream effects.”

Fleets often want to know how their maintenance program will change with autonomous trucks, Jatt noted. Fleets also wonder whether they will have to develop relationships with new partners and whether they will have to train their workforce differently.

Jatt also pointed out that fleets want to know what to expect when something goes wrong. For instance, what happens when a truck gets the inevitable flat tire and has to pull off to the side of the road?

“There are a lot of anticipatory challenges that we can identify together with fleets,” Jatt said. “What’s encouraging is the feedback we are getting: I would call it ‘constructive scrutiny.’ This is how can we figure out all the things we are going to need to do in order to make this technology successful.”

Shifting the traditional driver’s role

Like Waymo, Kodiak Robotics started hauling between Dallas and Houston in 2019 using Kenworth trucks loaded with Kodiak’s self-driving technology. Last December, the tech-enabled trucks navigated 205 miles of Texas highway for the first time.

During MOVE America Virtual, Don Burnette, co-founder and CEO of Kodiak Robotics, explained it’s important to recognize that Kodiak is working to build a true driver-out technology—meaning the company plans to deploy its trucks without anyone in the cab.

“When you think about the role of the traditional driver, I think it’s really going to shift in the future,” Burnette said. “We have been optimizing our technology specifically for highways. We envision a model where self-driving trucks focus on those long, lonely highway miles while leaving the first-mile pickup and last-mile delivery to the traditional human driver. The driver model will shift much more to the regional driving as opposed to some of those long-haul driving roles.”

To date, Kodiak has built a concept fleet and has been operating today as a carrier, hauling freight on behalf of commercial shippers. Kodiak is also working with digital brokers.

Photo: Kodiak Robotics

And until real driverless operations begin, Kodiak is focused on autonomous trucking as a service model, where Kodiak will build the autonomous driving system and provide that as a service to existing carriers, Burnette added.

“The freight industry has many different players,” he said. “On the shipping side, what we’ve heard from shippers is they care about moving goods reliably, on time, and at cost. If you can do that, then they would love to work with you as a carrier. They see the autonomous freight technology as a way to better streamline that reliability because these trucks will be able to operate more or less 24/7, they’re never drowsy, they are always paying attention, and I think that’s better overall for the ecosystem.”

Driver recruiting and retention issues have always topped industrywide concerns, but capacity constraints have become even more problematic during the pandemic. In addition, older truck drivers are beginning to retire and there aren’t enough younger entrants to fulfill current supply chain demands.

Waymo’s Jatt pointed out that it’s becoming more difficult for trucking companies to recruit drivers for long-haul routes.

“What’s really encouraging is it’s those use cases where I think autonomous trucks will be valuable,” Jatt said. “So, that shift to driving jobs to more regional or local jobs I think is a natural evolution where autonomous trucks can help narrow the driver shortage, first and foremost, and create a shift where the jobs in need of human drivers are more attractive. Hopefully, they will be easier to recruit and retain overall, creating an industry that is a little more resilient and reliable.”

AV challenges

One of the biggest challenges associated with full-scale adoption of Level 4 autonomous trucks starts with the truck manufacturer, Jatt pointed out.

“Today, if Waymo, Kodiak, or anyone else’s software was fully ready for autonomous trucks, you wouldn’t have a driverless truck on the road because you can’t actually buy the truck itself that is equipped with all the safety and redundancy technology that is needed for a vehicle to operate safely and successfully in fully autonomous mode,” he explained.

Jatt also emphasized that the design cycles in creating new technology in these vehicles take a long time. To help address some of these challenges, last year Waymo partnered with Daimler Trucks North America to develop a Freightliner Cascadia model and outfit it with the base technology needed to make that truck ready to operate in fully autonomous mode. That, according to Jatt, will take some time for that base truck platform and for Waymo to ready for full scalable commercial deployment.

Waymo is testing Peterbilt 579 trucks on runs from Dallas to El Paso and Houston.Photo: Waymo

Jatt also pointed out that AV technology is fundamentally agnostic when it comes to the powertrain of the vehicle, so Kodiak and Waymo are both testing with traditional diesel trucks on the road today. As the industry moves toward electric trucks, both tech providers intend to be part of the transition; however, they aren’t planning on waiting around for widescale charging infrastructure or to hold off on the other benefits that can be realized from autonomous technology on any type of powertrain.

“We’re all developing our AV systems to be platform agnostic,” Burnette emphasized. “While we don’t have any project working on electric drivetrains today, I think it will be easier to work on an electric drivetrain. It will be more responsive, there is more latency, and working with diesel platforms is actually more complicated.

“Waymo, Kodiak and the rest of the AV industry are not vehicle platform developers,” he added. “We certainly believe in the electrification of the future. For now, the benefits of AV technology are important enough that we can’t wait around for electrification. We have to work with what we have today. There are a lot of other drivetrains possible for the future, and I think that AV technology will be available for whichever.”

Both Jatt and Burnette also addressed the public misconception between Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy. Waymo and Kodiak both focus on Level 4 autonomous driving rather than Level 5, which is anytime, anywhere, any place without a driver.

“In terms of the rollout, we understand the challenges we have, and we think it will be available in the coming years,” Jatt said. “We don’t put an exact date on it, but this is not a decade-away technology. This is very much going to come in the coming years, but it’s also not going to happen overnight.”

Kodiak’s Burnette believes that the industry will see the first driverless trucks on the road sooner than people think.

“It’s not going to be this year and maybe not next year, but certainly on some lanes, at some capacity, and at some level of scale, I think by 2025,” he said. “It’s going to be a long time before we see full-scale adoption across the country more broadly.”

Burnette also emphasized that the trucking industry isn’t going to change overnight. The shift to Level 4 autonomous trucking will likely be a gradual, symbiotic shift over the course of the next decades, he added.