Daimler Truck Unviels Battery Electric Autonomous Freightliner eCascadia Technology Demonstrator

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• Daimler Truck is pursuing a imaginative and prescient of zero emissions and elevated street security by combining the 2 most promising applied sciences to ship on that imaginative and prescient — battery electrical drive and built-in autonomous driving expertise — in a single semi-truck for the primary time in its historical past: the autonomous Freightliner eCascadia expertise demonstrator.
• The truck relies on a manufacturing battery electrical Freightliner eCascadia and is supplied with Torc’s autonomous driving software program and the newest Stage 4 sensor and compute expertise.
• Whereas nonetheless a analysis and superior engineering challenge, the autonomous automobile has the potential to evolve right into a modular, scalable platform that’s propulsion agnostic for versatile use in several trucking purposes.
• The aim is to supply clients a alternative of the suitable autos for his or her particular enterprise and transportation wants.

Daimler Truck has the clear aim to guide the transformation to sustainable transportation and to handle the challenges of tomorrow. The corporate is pursuing a imaginative and prescient of zero emissions and elevated street security by combining the 2 most promising applied sciences to ship on that imaginative and prescient — battery electrical drive and built-in autonomous driving expertise — in a single semi-truck for the primary time in its historical past: the autonomous Freightliner eCascadia expertise demonstrator.

The truck relies on a manufacturing battery electrical Freightliner eCascadia and is supplied with Torc’s autonomous driving software program and the newest Stage 4 sensor and compute expertise. It will finally allow Stage 4 autonomous driving. Torc Robotics is Daimler Truck’s impartial subsidiary for autonomous digital driver expertise. Whereas nonetheless a analysis and superior engineering challenge, the autonomous automobile has the potential to evolve right into a modular, scalable platform that’s propulsion agnostic for versatile use in several trucking purposes. The aim is to supply clients a alternative of the suitable autos for his or her particular enterprise and transportation wants.

“By combining zero-emission and autonomous technologies in one product, we are testing solutions for challenges our customers are likely to face in the future,” stated John O’Leary, president and CEO of Daimler Truck North America. “We want to give them choices that allow them to do what they do best: keep the world moving today and well into the future. That takes a lot of foresight, questioning, testing, learning, improving and co-creating with our customers years in advance to ultimately find the right solution. This truck is a great example of the beginning of that development process.”

Joanna Buttler, Head of International Autonomous Expertise Group at Daimler Truck, added: “Together with Torc, we are making significant progress towards introducing autonomous trucks in the U.S. by 2027. While we target autonomous trucks with conventional propulsion technology for this first market launch, we always look further into the future. We will employ an iterative approach to the development, testing and optimization of autonomous-electric technology, while exploring the most promising use cases in collaboration with our fleet customers.”

Technical specs: Merging the very best of each worlds

The industry-leading battery electrical Freightliner eCascadia, a confirmed automobile base for the autonomous eCascadia expertise demonstrator, went into manufacturing in 2022 and has now reached 6 million real-world miles in additional than 55 fleets in america. This zero-emission Class 8 truck is designed to offer optimum productiveness for fleets trying to transition to environment friendly, zero-emission tractors. The battery may be recharged to 80 p.c capability in as little as 90 minutes. A number of battery and drive axle choices can be found, offering a typical vary of 155, 220 or 230 miles, relying on the particular configuration. The Freightliner eCascadia is supplied with the proprietary Detroit ePowertrain, which delivers efficiency, effectivity, and reliability. For added security on the street, the eCascadia additionally comes commonplace with the Detroit Assurance suite of security techniques, together with Energetic Brake Help 5.

For the primary time, the autonomous sensor suite and compute energy, presently being examined on the autonomous diesel Cascadia, is packaged to suit the smaller day cab configuration of the battery electrical eCascadia. To make sure sufficient cooling, Daimler Truck North America’s engineering group developed a complicated prototype air-cooling idea for the compute stack, which is effectively positioned between the driving force and passenger seats. Custom-made software program offers the autonomous system with management interfaces and suggestions on automobile standing. The in-house designed sensor bar cowl, which contains cameras, lidar sensors and radar sensors, improves aerodynamic efficiency whereas offering higher safety from injury and soiling. 4 further 12-volt batteries present sufficient excessive voltage energy to make sure uninterrupted operation and elevated effectivity and security.

A glimpse into the long run

Daimler Truck is devoted to exploring the potential of rising applied sciences to learn its clients. The corporate goals to offer them with the optimum automobile options, using varied propulsion applied sciences, to allow essentially the most appropriate and environment friendly transportation of their items. By creating a propulsion-agnostic autonomous truck platform, Daimler Truck is leveraging its collective power to make a constructive impression on the way forward for transportation.

The autonomous eCascadia demonstrator offers a glimpse of future autonomous use circumstances, together with shorter, repeatable routes with the usage of zero-emissions infrastructure. Relying on the appliance, future autonomous vehicles is also powered by hydrogen-based propulsion applied sciences.

Within the presently examined hub-to-hub software, the truck’s intent is to drive autonomously between freight facilities alongside U.S. freeway corridors. By figuring out synergies between zero emissions and autonomous infrastructure in a future state of affairs, the charging infrastructure and autonomous freight hubs might be mixed to cost and cargo concurrently, additional enhancing effectivity for carriers.

The autonomous eCascadia expertise demonstrator is designed with many commonalities with the manufacturing eCascadia, leveraging synergies within the growth course of, streamlining engineering processes and growing buyer worth by ease of serviceability as clients might already be aware of the battery electrical Cascadia.

Fixed progress

Daimler Truck has been creating and testing autonomous truck expertise since 2015 with the reveal of the Freightliner Inspiration Truck as the primary licensed SAE Stage 2 autonomous industrial truck to function on open public highways in america. The corporate goals to enter the market with manufacturing SAE Stage 4 autonomous vehicles in america by 2027. Daimler Truck’s expertise associate Torc has been testing autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia vehicles in real-world purposes with chosen logistics corporations equivalent to Schneider and C.R. England, efficiently shifting buyer freight autonomously on its take a look at route between Phoenix and Oklahoma Metropolis, over the previous 12 months.

Daimler Truck has emphasised that it’ll leverage the extremely scalable and worthwhile market alternative that autonomous driving is predicted to supply, and that it expects autonomous trucking to generate revenues of three billion Euro and EBIT of greater than 1 billion Euro as early as 2030.

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