Autonomous

What do the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 and a seminal 2012 study by Google on how people interact with self-driving cars have in common?

No discussion of the future of the trucking industry is complete without considering the advance of automated driving technology, and how it might support the movement of freight in the years and decades ahead.

After several years of fanfare and debate over when and how self-driving commercial vehicles would reach the market, early forms of this technology are beginning to become an option in new trucks.

CENTREVILLE, Va. —While some self-driving truck developers are focused on building a future when heavy-duty vehicles will operate autonomously on the highway, another startup has already begun to commercialize an automated driving system that it believes is market-ready today.

Over the past year, startups working to commercialize highly auto­mated heavy-duty trucks competed for more capital and engineers, and each pushed deeper into systems development.

Drones can offer an appealing alternative to traditional cargo delivery methods, according to Daniel Friedenzohn, associate dean of the College of Aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced $60 million in awards to research groups and state departments of transportation that are exploring projects related to vehicle automation.

Startup autonomous truck company TuSimple announced commitments from investors for an additional $120 million. These funds are part of an extended Series D round that was oversubscribed and reached a total of $215 million.

Volkswagen AG is bundling its software operations with an investment plan of about 8 billion euro ($9 billion) over the next three to five years, another step in the electric- and connected-car shift that’s heralding massive change across the industry.