The commercial operation of a fully autonomous electric truck began in Sweden

Swedish company Einride introduced the firstthe prototype of the T-pod unmanned truck back in 2017 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed ​​event only as a T-log truck. The public liked the novelty so much that in 2018 the transport company signed an agreement with the global logistics company DB Schenker to test its new T-pod truck on their site. And so, the tests ended and in Sweden the first electric self-driving truck appeared on public roads.

As Einride herself points out, her task is toto make trucking “smarter”, more environmentally friendly, safer, more cost-effective and smooth. The company also claims that its first T-pod truck "makes many of the solutions used in conventional transport virtually obsolete."

The battery-powered T-pod has no cab fordriver and is equipped with a fourth level of autonomy. He is assisted by a set of cameras, radars, LIDARs, as well as the Nvidia Drive computing platform, equipped with artificial intelligence algorithms. At the same time, a human operator can control a car remotely if necessary. According to Einride, the power reserve of a single T-pod battery lasts about 200 kilometers. The maximum speed of an electric self-driving truck is 85 kilometers per hour. It is quite enough for transport, designed to perform certain logistic tasks.

Tests of autonomous electric truckwas held at one of the DB Schenker enterprises in the city of Jonkoping in November 2018. In March of this year, the Swedish Transport Authority conducted its assessment of the T-pod's capabilities, after which it gave permission for pilot tests of the truck on public roads.

During the latter, which took place at the beginning of thisof the week, the truck moved between the warehouse of DB Schenker and one of its terminals in the industrial zone, “where the speed is usually lower than in the rest of the city”. Leaving the warehouse of the company and reaching the terminal, the truck drove through an automatic gate, got to the destination point, turned around at the site and drove back to the warehouse.

"Heavy road transport is responsible forsignificant amounts of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Successful pilot trials in Jönköping is a small but very important step towards the creation of a smooth, autonomous and environmentally safe transport system. The permission obtained by the Swedish Transport Authority testifies to the security of our solution, ”commented Robert Falk, the head of Einride.

Now the T-pod will run daily betweenwarehouse and terminal. Permission to operate the truck was issued until December 31, 2020. By 2020, the company expects to introduce 200 T-pods into commercial operation. To do this, Einride has agreements with a number of large companies: the German supermarket chain Lidl, the Swedish courier service Svenska Retursystem and several retailers from the Fortune 500 list. in USA.

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