FORT WORTH, Texas — Volvo Autonomous Solutions (V.A.S.) has opened an office in Texas as the company begins manual operations in preparation for commercial autonomous hub-to-hub transport.
According to a company statement, V.A.S. has opened an office in Fort Worth that’s “dedicated to driving activities to set up its first autonomous freight corridors that will run from Dallas Forth Worth to El Paso and from Dallas to Houston.”
To prepare for commercial launch, V.A.S. has also started to haul loads with trucks using drivers for key customers like DHL and Uber Freight to test aspects of the transport solution and establish frameworks and procedures for safe and reliable operations.
“At Volvo Autonomous Solutions, we believe the path to autonomy at scale is through reducing the friction and complications around ownership and operations for customers,” said Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “This is why we have taken the decision to be the single interface to our customers and take full ownership of the elements required for commercial autonomous transport. With the opening of our office in Texas and start of operational activities, we are building the foundations for a transport solution that will change the way we move goods on highways.”
Sasko Cuklev, head of on-road solutions at Volvo, said that the company’s ambition through V.A.S. “is to create a new source of industry capacity that will ease some of the burden of the increasing demand for freight while also enabling local drivers to shift into short-haul jobs that will keep them closer to home. This will unlock significant efficiencies in the entire supply chain and benefit everyone in the transportation industry.”
The Autonomous Transport Solutions (ATS) offered by V.A.S. includes hardware, software and services required to run autonomous transport operations, a news release stated. On highways, the solution is operated based on a hub-to-hub model where autonomous trucks take on the highway portion of the driving, operating all hours of the day and night between transfer hubs while human drivers complete local operations.
To accelerate the development and adoption of autonomous transport solutions, V.A.S. is partnering with others in the industry including DHL and Uber Freight who are part of the V.A.S. key customer program. The program is aimed at shippers, carriers, logistics service providers and freight brokers whom V.A.S. will work with to pilot and commercialize autonomous transport solutions.
V.A.S. has also formed a partnership with autonomous trucking company Aurora with the Aurora Driver installed on Volvo’s on-highway truck offerings.
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