Traton Group and PlusAI on Monday announced an expansion of the companies' partnership on autonomous trucking solutions.
"Autonomous trucking is a strategic pillar of Traton's long-term technology roadmap," says Niklas Klingenberg, a member of Traton's executive board who is responsible for research and development. "From Day One of our collaboration, PlusAI's technical capabilities and commercial execution have exceeded our expectations, giving us even greater confidence that we have chosen the right partner. Autonomy represents a meaningful opportunity to deliver higher uptime and greater value for our fleet customers while strengthening the long-term competitiveness of our brands. Our expanded partnership will reflect both this confidence and our shared goal of bringing factory-built, on-road autonomous trucks to market at scale."
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Under the agreement, Traton will commit up to $25 million in non-dilutive research and development funding to PlusAI to accelerate factory integration of SuperDrive into Traton brands' autonomous trucks. As PlusAI moves toward public trading, Traton will also nominate a representative to its board of directors and will be eligible to receive warrants that vest based on initial deployment revenue milestones.
PlusAI and Traton's partnership was first announced in 2024 when Traton selected SuperDrive as the autonomous driving platform for Scania, MAN and International trucks. Since then, the companies have moved steadily toward Level 4 autonomous trucking capabilities.
"Together with Traton, we've moved autonomy from the lab to factory integration and now to real-world operations," David Liu, CEO and co-founder of PlusAI, says. "We now have a common Level 4 software stack operating in Europe and the U.S., proven integration on truck platforms of Traton's brands, successful driverless validation and customer pilots underway. The expanded partnership allows us to build on this momentum and accelerate towards scaled commercial deployment."
In the last year, Traton and PlusAI launched customer fleet trials along the I-35 corridor between Laredo, Texas, and Dallas using tractors equipped with factory-installed sensors, computers and the latest SuperDrive release. The companies expect fleet trials to continue in the U.S. in preparation for a commercial launch.
