Many people see autonomous driving as the future of freight trucks. Solo AVT Inc. wants to cash in on that trend.
But unlike other startups in the space, the Fremont company, which emerged from stealth Wednesday, isn't working on its own self-driving technology. Instead, Solo is developing a truck — an electric-powered big rig that it's designing from the get-go to be driven autonomously. The startup is crafting its truck so developers of self-driving technology can easily integrate their systems into it, rather than bolting them onto freight trucks that were designed to be driven by people.
As such, Solo's truck — a so-called Class 8 vehicle, a designation linked to its large weight and size — won't have a sleeping cabin or even a steering wheel.
"We're building the first ... new Class 8 fully electric truck designed from the ground up to be autonomous," Solo's founder and CEO Graham Doorley told the Business Journal. "We actually do not have driver controls in the vehicle."
Many businesses, including Aurora Innovation Inc., are working on autonomous technology for commercial trucks or vehicles. Meanwhile, Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq:TSLA) and some other companies are developing electric-powered big rigs. But few — if any — companies are designing electric-powered freight trucks that are designed to be autonomously driven by other companies' systems, Doorley said.
He should know. The world of self-driving technology market is small and interconnected, Doorley said. He himself previously worked in engineering roles at Tesla and at Waymo LLC, the self-driving car company owned by Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOGL).
ABOUT SOLO AVT INC.
- Headquarters: Fremont
- CEO: Graham Doorley
- Year founded: 2021
- Number of employees: 8
- Website: soloavt.com
Solo's truck will be software-agnostic
Federal regulations allow electric-powered Class 8 big rigs to weigh as much as 82,000 pounds, fully loaded. Solo is designing its truck to handle that kind of load, Doorley said. It's still completing the design of its flagship model, the SD1 Heavy, but plans to begin testing it later this year. To help fund its development efforts and build out its engineering team, the startup raised a $7 million seed round from investors including Trucks VC, Maniv Mobility and Wireframe Ventures, it announced Wednesday.
The startup is crafting the SD1 so it will essentially be software-agnostic, capable of being driven by any autonomous system available today or in the near future, Doorley said. The developers of self-driving technology are in need of trucks that are ready-made for driverless navigation, he said. But being compatible with multiple companies' systems also allow Solo to hedge its bets, he said.
"There are several of these (self-driving) companies. They all have very good approaches," he said. "It's too early to pick winners or losers," he continued, "so we're happy to work with all of them."
It's unclear how far the SD1 will go on a charge; Doorley declined to say. Tesla is promising its in-development Tesla Semi freight truck, which will also be electric-powered but designed to be driven by a person, will have a range of 500 miles.
Doorley expects the SD1's range will grow over time as battery technology improves.
"If you look at battery technology, it's on a nicely defined curve of advancing energy density over time," Doorley said. "We're looking at what's going to be available when we look to deploy the vehicles."
Solo doesn't have any sales — yet
Because Solo is still designing its big rig, it's not yet seeing any revenue, Doorley said. Once its vehicles are road-worthy, the startup plans to lease them to autonomous driving companies in a kind of trucking-as-a-service model, he said.
The size of the autonomous electric truck market is likely in the "hundreds of billions," though a more precise figure is difficult to estimate, Doorley said. Research and Markets, a market research firm, estimated in November that the global autonomous truck market would grow from $2 billion in 2021 to $4.3 billion by 2026.
The country's 3.5 million truck drivers may worry about losing their jobs to self-driving big rigs. But they shouldn't fret too much, because there will still be a need for their driving and their expertise for years to come, Doorley said. Even as companies switch over to driverless vehicles, truck drivers may still be needed to operate trucks remotely.
"The transition to autonomy will not occur overnight," Doorley said.
Speaking of jobs, the biggest challenge that Solo has faced so far has been in hiring, Doorley said. The company is conducting a national search for engineers to help design and build the SD1 Heavy. While some of those engineers could work remotely, it needs others to be local to work on the physical prototype of the vehicle, he said.
Locating the company in Fremont made sense due to the availability of large space for designing the prototype, as well as the location of the city in the heart of the Bay Area, Doorley said. Though there have been many reports of engineers leaving the region for more affordable locales, the Bay Area is still a hotspot for highly-qualified tech workers.
"There's been a lot of talk about talent leaving," he said. "But we still find that the core talent base in the Bay is extremely strong."
