Google was the first company to start testing autonomous vehicles in Austin back in the summer of 2015. While Google has since spun those efforts into Waymo and ultimately pulled its testing vehicles out of the city, other companies have taken up the mantle.
Austin has since become one of several tech hubs paving the way for autonomous vehicle development and testing. That includes, perhaps most notably, the decision by Ford and Argo AI to make Austin the center of their self-driving vehicle efforts. The pair is set to launch a forthcoming robotaxi service in 2022 that will make autonomous vehicles accessible to everyday consumers.
Now, Swedish autonomous electric freight vehicle company Einride is planning to establish Austin as its U.S. headquarters later this year after raising a $110 million series B funding round, TechCrunch reported.
The company was founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, Linnéa Kornehed and Filip Lilja. Einride's primary offering, its Pod vehicle, is a futuristic vehicle with no cab that can be deployed in fenced-in facilities using predetermined routes, as well as shipping on public roads.
Einride offers its vehicles on a subscription basis. Its customers include Coca-Cola, Oatly, Lidl and Electrolux.
Einride says it is the world’s first company to operate autonomous, all-electric freight vehicles on public roads. Last year, it named its COO, Niklas Reinedahl, as its U.S. general manager. The company has raised a total of $150 million, with backers including Temasek, Soros Fund Management LLC, Northzone, Maersk Growth, Build Capital, EQT Ventures, Plum Alley Investments, Norrsken VC, Ericsson and NordicNinja VC.
Einride, which also plans to open offices in New York and Silicon Valley, has more than 50 job openings posted on its site, including roles for regional commercial director, sales director and solution architect manager in Austin.
The company is one of several autonomous vehicle companies hiring in Austin.
San Diego-based TuSimple, for example, is an autonomous trucking company that has expanded to Texas to launch autonomous freight shipping between Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston. Its recruiting autonomous vehicle system operators and testing engineers in Austin. California-based Nvidia, meanwhile, is recruiting in Austin for a director of engineering for its AI infrastructure and autonomous business unit.
And earlier this week, NI, an Austin-based company formerly known as National Instruments that makes automated testing equipment and software, acquired local startup MonoDrive, which makes simulation software for autonomous vehicles. NI said it hopes to use MonoDrive's signal processing and simulations to improve performance in virtual testing environments.
