Volvo Autonomous Solutions has opened a Fort Worth office aimed at setting up its first autonomous freight corridors.
The autonomous transport firm will set up freight corridors from Dallas-Fort Worth to El Paso and from Dallas to Houston. V.A.S. has also started to haul loads with trucks using drivers for key customers such as DHL and Uber Freight to test aspects of the transport solution and establish frameworks and procedures for safe and reliable operations, according to a news release.
"At Volvo Autonomous Solutions we believe the path to autonomy at scale is through reducing the friction and complications around ownership and operations for customers,” Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions, said in a prepared statement. “This is why we have taken the decision to be the single interface to our customers and take full ownership of the elements required for commercial autonomous transport. With the opening of our office in Texas and start of operational activities, we are building the foundations for a transport solution that will change the way we move goods on highways.”
Part of the Sweden-based Volvo Group and a division of Greensboro-based Volvo Trucks North America, Volvo Autonomous Solutions offers technology including hardware, software and services required to run autonomous transport operations. On highways, the solution operates based on a hub-to-hub model where autonomous trucks take on the highway portion of the driving, operating all hours of the day and night between transfer hubs while human drivers complete local operations.
"Through our Autonomous Transport Solution, our ambition is to create a new source of industry capacity that will ease some of the burden of the increasing demand for freight while also enabling local drivers to shift into short-haul jobs that will keep them closer to home,” Sasko Cuklev, head of On-Road Solutions, said in a prepared statement. “This will unlock significant efficiencies in the entire supply chain and benefit everyone in the transportation industry.
V.A.S. has also formed a partnership with industry-pioneer Pittsburgh-based Aurora Innovation Inc. (Nasdaq: AUR). At the heart of the partnership is the integration of the Aurora Driver with Volvo's on-highway truck offering.
Aurora recently opened its South Dallas Terminal, which will serve as a blueprint for all future terminals where trucks powered by the company's AV technology can come for loading, refueling and inspection-based needs. Aurora's Houston terminal equivalent will reach this stage in the third quarter of 2023.
For now, these trucks will still be driven by human operators until the company ships its autonomous trucking subscription platform called Aurora Horizon by the end of 2024. The company plans to launch Aurora Horizon with its partners along the Interstate 45 corridor in between Houston and Dallas, one of the main routes the company has been testing on extensively over the years.
Aurora actively hauls 50 customer loads per week with its shipping partners across two routes in Texas as part of a pilot program of its autonomous trucking platform. These routes will be among the first to go fully autonomous when Aurora pulls its drivers from its cabs upon the launch of Aurora Horizon.
Aurora announced its Houston-Dallas pilot program in September 2021 with Memphis, Tennessee-based transportation and logistics giant FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) and Paccar (Nasdaq: PCAR), a Bellevue, Washington-based designer and maker of large semi-trucks. Autonomously enabled trucks started hauling FedEx loads along the 500-mile stretch of I-45, and the partnership added a 600-mile route between Fort Worth and El Paso in May 2022.
In summer 2022, Aurora added national trucking firm Schneider National Inc. (NYSE: SNDR) as another commercial pilot partner to further test out and validate autonomous freight-hauling capabilities between Houston and Dallas.
Waymo, a subsidiary of Google owner Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOGL), also has piloted partnerships in the Houston area in collaboration with Arkansas-based J.B. Hunt Transport Services (Nasdaq: JBHT). The autonomous trucking partnership has included Atlanta-based UPS (NYSE: UPS), Minnesota-based shipping company C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc. (Nasdaq: CHRW) and Boston-based e-commerce company Wayfair.
Houston has been a hot spot for autonomous vehicle partnerships since Mountain View, California-based Nuro Inc. expanded its partnership with Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) to the Bayou City in April 2019. Nuro announced several other driverless delivery pilot programs in Houston with Walmart, CVS Pharmacy, Domino's Pizza, FedEx and Uber Eats in recent years.
Houston's growing population, climate, geography and driverless vehicle-friendly local regulations made the market attractive to Nuro, the company told the Houston Business Journal in 2019. However, Nuro announced last month it plans to reduce its headcount, move away from making its vehicles and focus on research and development in an effort to cut cost.
Meanwhile, "robotaxis" are also coming to Houston. Cruise LLC, an autonomous vehicle company majority-owned by General Motors (NYSE: GM), said last month it will deploy self-driving cars on Houston streets.
Previous Houston Business Journal reporting has been added to this report.
