Waymo teams up with Daimler to produce self-driving Freightliner Cascadias ‘in the coming years’

An autonomous driving technology company announced a new partnership with one of the world’s biggest truck manufacturers to bring self-driving semi trucks to market in America.

On October 27, technology company Waymo and Daimler Trucks North America LLC announced an agreement to bring an autonomous Freightliner Cascadia truck to market in the U.S. “in the coming years.”

The companies say that the Freightliner Cascadias will be “highly automated SAE Level 4 trucks” equipped with Waymo’s proprietary “World’s Most Experienced Driver” technology.

Waymo says that their autonomous driving technology was developed after having driven “over 20 million miles on public roads across 25 U.S. cities and 15 billion miles in simulation.”

The two companies also announced plans to expand “to other markets and brands in the near future.”

“The combination of increased road freight volumes and the need and vision of fleet operators for highly automated trucks, is what fuels our relentless pursuit of innovation.  We are pushing engineering solutions that strive above all to increase safety and help our customers improve business efficiencies. Based on our collaboration with Waymo, we will be in the unique position to be able to provide our fleet customers with a choice among the best solutions for their individual requirements,” said Roger Nielsen, President and CEO of Daimler Trucks North America LLC.

Daimler has been at work independently developing autonomous truck technology since 2015 when the company debuted the Freightliner Inspiration prototype truck. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2019, Daimler showed off a Cascadia with Level 2 automation that requires a driver but provides hefty assistance features like emergency braking and automatic lane centering.

In late August 2020, Waymo announced that the company had begun testing autonomous truck technology in Dallas-Fort Worth area, deploying Peterbilt 579s outfitted with Waymo technology to El Paso via Interstates 20 and 10, and to Houston via I-45.