Self Driving Truck Market: Innovative Start-ups Disrupting Nascent Industry

The global self-driving trucks market is poised for phenomenal success in the near future, with the demand incrementing at a robust CAGR through to 2025, according to a recently published market research report from IndustryARC. The analyst of the report anticipates transportation as a service to emerge as a trend going forward with a multitude of players pioneering the concept of driverless commercial trucks. The report is titled “Self-Driving Truck Market - Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Trends, Application Analysis, Growth And Forecast 2019 – 2024.”

According to American Trucking Association the shortage for truck drivers was around 50,000 by the end of 2017, and if the current trend is regularized in the region then the shortage could lead to surpass 174,000 by the year 2026.  As per the Volvo Trucks safety report 2017, around 4,000 road fatalities occurs in the European Union only every year, which lead to almost 3,043 deaths as per the analysis of Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Highway Loss Data Institute. A truly driverless truck could change the experience of trucking. Additionally, the introduction of such trucks will radically reduce the deaths occurring due to road accidents. According to transportation experts, trucking is viewed as a natural application for self-driving technology owing to relative predictability at the highways compared to busy city roads. This initiated the market for self-driving trucks.

Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Waymo is one of the first companies that started the production of self-driven vehicles. The company started autonomous vehicle production in 2009 in a joint venture with Google. Waymo initiated pilot projects on autonomous trucks from 2015. Later in 2018, the company started expanding the scope of the self-driven trucks experiments. Once again teaming up with Google, Waymo will soon be expanding its self-driving trucks market presence by starting its fleet of self-driven trucks that will be delivering freights for Google’s data center in Atlanta. Google is supporting Waymo by the means of advance control systems software they are developing to integrate the technology in operations of shippers and carriers. The successful implementation of driverless commercial trucks in the U.S. will boost self-driving truck sales in the region. 

In 2016, Uber took a leap towards the autonomous vehicle technology by launching self-driven vehicles in Pittsburgh with the vehicle support from Volvo. To improve efficiency and productivity, Uber acquired autonomous technology innovator Otto in 2016. With the joint help from Volvo and Otto, the company started the production of autonomous driving trucks. The San Francisco based company Otto, has the technology of numerous sensors such as motion sensor, infrared radar, and LIDAR systems. Often referred to as laser radar system is a surveying method used to measure distance with the help of pulsed laser light. 

However, the founder of Otto Trucking LLC, Anthony Lewandowski who was formerly an engineer in the Google self-driven car project, faced a lawsuit from Google for downloading more than 10,000 corporate files from Google. This was a hiccup for Uber as the production of their self-driven trucks were stalled for almost two years. Fortunately, in 2018 the co-founder of Otto Trucking LLC returned to Uber Technologies to resume their trucking business popularly known as Uber Freight.     

Embark a start-up based from San-Francisco is one of the fastest growing firms in the industry. In early 2018, this company completed its first coast-to-coast pilot run by the means of a self-driving truck. It followed the itinerary from suburban Los Angeles to Jacksonville, Florida. The company is providing transportation as a service to shippers between Ontario and Phoenix. Embark received a diligent capital investment of $30 million from Silicon Valley-based firm called Sequoia, which boosted the company’s total funding to $47 million.   

The self-driving trucks market is still flourishing and is yet to reach its apex. The prime reason supporting the growth for these trucks is the introduction of innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud technologies. Mortalities occurred owing to the road accidents caused by the carelessness of drivers will be reduced by the introduction of these autonomous trucks. Also, the shortage of truck drivers in the North American and European region could be tackled with the implementation of robotic trucks. The self-driven trucks market is expected to witness a bolstering profit in the near future.