Uber’s self-driving big rigs traveling across Arizona
If you’ve driven on a highway in Arizona in recent months, you may have shared the road with an automated truck without even realizing it.
This week, Uber — the ride-hailing network rushing to control the future of automated driving — announced that the company has begun transporting freight using automated big rigs.
The robot-driven Volvo trucks, which include a human backup driver, have been limited to Arizona highways since they were rolled out in November, the company said. Uber has not revealed how many automated trucks they have on the road or whether they’ve been involved in any accidents. The company does not have a formal partnership with Volvo, but has instead retrofitted Volvo trucks with their technology.
“This a big step forward in self-driving truck technology, and the future of the freight industry at large,” the company said in a statement.
Though Uber’s trucks aren’t electric, the trucking industry is on the verge of significant changes, analysts say, as transportation companies such as Uber, Tesla and Waymo begin to develop electric, autonomous trucks.
A startup called Embark recently drove their automated truck across the country without a driver, completing a 2,400-mile journey from California to Florida.
The changes are being driven by a desire for greater safety, lower fuel costs and cleaner energy. Freight movement — a category that includes trucks, trains, ships and planes that carry goods — accounts for 16 percent of all corporate greenhouse gas emissions, which constitutes an enormous carbon footprint, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. More than 4,000 people were killed and 116,000 others injured in accidents involving large trucks in 2015, the most recent year statistics were available, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Human drivers still onboard
Uber’s current system — known as “Uber Freight” — relies heavily on human drivers, who escort the self-driving truck across the Arizona state border before the big rig (with a vehicle operator in the driver’s seat) completes the long haul, highway portion of the trip, according to Uber. As the load nears its destination, the company said, the vehicle is handed off to a conventional driver who takes over and completes the delivery.
In a video published Tuesday, Uber lays out how the company’s trucking system works in more detail using the stories of two truckers from different parts of the country. The highly coordinated system (outlined in a second video) is dependent upon “transfer hubs,” where loads are transferred to selfdriving trucks and drivers return to their starting point with different loads. Uber hopes the system will cut down on the time drivers spend on the road and the amount of time freight languishes in warehouses.