How Plus wants to swap out human drivers on long-haul trucks

Editor's note: As part of the Bay Area Inno Awards, the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal are highlighting nine startups from nine categories across the innovation space. We chose these firms based on their ability to fundamentally change the game in their respective fields, grow quickly and durably and develop useful products to solve compelling problems. Here's the honoree in the transportation category.

Here’s a sobering statistic: In 2020, the last year for which data is available, close to 5,000 people died in accidents that involved large trucks. That’s a 33% increase over nearly a decade.

The data point helps to show why the startup PlusAI Inc., which is known just as Plus, has worked to provide software to help grant autonomy to big rig trucks. Last year, the company unveiled a system called PlusDrive, which allows a truck that has a human driver to also operate autonomously. The company says this helps make trips safer and less stressful.

“Seventy percent of the goods we use every day come to us on a truck,” said Shawn Kerrigan, chief operating officer of Plus. “It’s a sector where there’s a big driver shortage, it’s also a sector where there are big challenges in terms of safety and fuel economy.”

Kerrigan founded the company in 2016, along with David Liu, Hao Zheng and Tim Daly. Today, Liu is CEO, Zheng is chief technology officer and Daly is the chief architect.

Plus isn’t alone in the autonomous startup trucking scene in Silicon Valley, though it is one of the best funded. Just last week, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. invested in Mountain View-based Kodiak Robotics. That investment came through the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Pilot Co., which operates Pilot and Flying J travel centers.

“Trucking is huge, it’s a $4 trillion global market, more than $600 billion in the U.S. alone,” Kerrigan said, talking about Plus’ market potential.

The ultimate challenge for Plus is to create a fully-autonomous, long-haul, big-rig truck. The company is in its first phase: supervised, autonomous trucks powered by the PlusDrive system. The second phase is to put completely autonomous trucks on roads without drivers.

The PlusDrive software integrates with existing chips and other hardware on a truck. It’s been purchased by customers like Amazon.com Inc. Kerrigan would not disclose how Plus charges its customers, but said the market for its product is huge.

“One thing that distinguishes us from other actors in the autonomous space is our focus on commercialization. We think it’s important to get this technology out there,” Kerrigan said. “That’s why we were the first autonomous technology developer in trucking to deliver products in the markets that we’re in, in particular in the U.S. market and in the Chinese market.”

One goal the company has with PlusDrive is to help logistics companies retain drivers, Kerrigan said. The U.S. is short about 80,000 truck drivers, according to recent reports, and this figure is expected to double in the next ten years.

“(PlusDrive) reduces driver turnover and improves the attractiveness of the job for drivers, and improves safety,” he said. “Trucking is a really challenging job; they work 14 hour days and drive up to 11 hours, driving in traffic ... It’s just very stressful and very difficult to drive a Class A truck.”

Autonomous trucking will eventually enable much faster delivery of goods across the U.S. and continents worldwide, Kerrigan said. “There’s tremendous potential for this technology to revolutionize transportation,” he said. “Imagine if you could move goods from California to New York in half the time.”

Plus’ time as a startup may be about to end. In May 2021, the company announced plans to go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. But that got called off six months later because of “recent developments in the regulatory environment outside of the United States.”

Just last week, the company was reportedly looking to sell its Chinese operations to one of its investors, China-based Full Truck Alliance Co. Ltd. But there as also a hint that it may be interested in selling the entire company.

Plus plans to honor its order to deliver 1,000 self-driving truck systems to Amazon, Kerrigan said. The company also recently opened an office in Germany, adding to its office in China and its Silicon Valley headquarters. The company recently relocated its local base from Cupertino to Santa Clara.

“We’re continuing to recruit and hire people,” he said. “We continue to be really excited on delivering all the commitments that we’ve announced in the past year.”

PlusAI Inc.