Might take years for it to hit commercial markets though.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: On Sunday night atop the Hoover Dam, Freightliner lifted the lid on the Inspiration Truck — “a partially autonomous big rig that could save lives, mitigate driver fatigue and stress, and reduce CO2 emissions up to 5 percent,” according to The Verge.
Daimler, which owns Freighliner, says it has done more than 10,000 miles of testing. It recently became street-legal when it became the first commercial vehicle to obtain one of Nevada’s “Autonomous Vehicle” license plates, which was presented by Nevada governor Brian Sandoval at a media event before the big rig’s unveiling.
“There’s a clear need for this generation of trucks, and we’re the pioneers who are willing to tackle it,” Wolfgang Bernhard, a member of Daimler’s board, told Wired.
The Inspiration Truck’s autonomous “Highway Pilot” technology isn’t meant to replace truck drivers entirely. It’s rather meant to solve the problem of fatigued driving, an affliction familiar to any truck driver who has to pull long shifts on the road. According to Daimler, 90 percent of truck crashes are the result of driver error, and driver fatigue plays a role in one in eight of those.
The Inspiration Truck is considered “level 3” on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s automation scale, reported The Verge. It the second-highest level of automation — the same designation Google’s self-driving cars currently operate under. Level 3 indicates a vehicle is “advanced enough to enable the driver to cede full control in certain traffic or environmental conditions.” The driver has the ability to regain control, but the vehicle should allow a “comfortable transition time.”
Bernhard compared the relationship between the Inspiration Truck and its driver to the control a pilot has over a commercial airliner: “Technically speaking these vehicles are operating ‘partly automated,'” he told The Verge. “So [the driver] is still in charge of what happens. He’s responsible.”
Despite its newly street-legal status in Nevada, the Inspiration truck is still very much a test vehicle. Daimler will need its semi-autonomous semi to log a few million more test miles in a wide variety of locales and conditions — such as snow, rain, and extreme temperatures — before it’s ready to be offered for public consumption. Wired revealed it could be a decade or more before The Freighliner exits the testing phase and hits the automotive market.