TuSimple announces business expansion

Tu Simple Navistar 300x200TuSimple announced that in response to growing commercial demand from 12 contracted customers, including Fortune 100 and large international companies, the company currently has 11 trucks in the U.S. and will have 40 trucks in fully-autonomous operation by June.

The company now makes three to five fully-autonomous trips per day for customers on three different routes in Arizona. An additional route from Arizona to Texas will come online in early 2019. TuSimple is the only self-driving truck company running daily fully-autonomous commercial routes from depot-to-depot, which requires both highway and local street driving, the company says.

At CES 2019, TuSimple is displaying a Navistar International LT semi-truck in Las Vegas, Jan. 8-11, highlighting the company’s self-driving (Level 4) perception system and showcasing what TuSimple trucks “see” while driving autonomously.

TuSimple also announced it is working with Tier 1 suppliers, including Cummins Inc., to enable powertrain integration with its autonomous technologies. Cummins was instrumental in developing the industry standard interface between powertrains and autonomous systems. Cummins is bringing its nearly 100 years of technological innovation in engines, components and controls to partners like TuSimple and other technology companies to ensure seamless and safe integration in the efforts to bring autonomous vehicles to commercial markets, TuSimple says.

“We are pleased to work with TuSimple and other companies across the globe to help bring autonomous vehicle technology to commercial markets,” says Morgan Andreae, executive director, growth office, Cummins Inc. “Cummins is a global powertrain leader with expertise in not only engines, but also controls and electronics and we are bringing this technical knowledge to develop a sophisticated interface that can allow powertrains and vehicles to integrate and operate efficiently, effectively and safely.”

Xiaodi Hou, TuSimple founder, president and chief technology officer, says, “Exactly one year after debuting our prototype system at CES 2018, we’re now running up to five commercial trips a day in Arizona, expanding our fleet and moving quickly toward our goal of creating the first commercial self-driving truck. We are making tremendous progress towards the commercialization of our technology and trucking ecosystem with key Tier 1 partners like Cummins. The viability and power of our autonomous truck solutions is being proven daily on highways and local streets.”

With the company’s camera-centric perception solution, TuSimple’s trucks have a vision range of 1,000 meters. Most driverless systems can only see optimum quality up to 150 meters ahead of the vehicle, the company says. The California Department of Motor Vehicles lists anything less than 300 meters to be low visibility and recommends that driver precautions be taken. TuSimple says its self-driving trucks can also see 360 degrees around for a pixel-level interpretation of the visible environment, enabling the vehicle to have three-centimeter control precision at all times.

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