Chinese TuSimple to enlarge its U.S. truck fleet in H1' 2019

China-based autonomous trucking startup TuSimple, which is for the first time demonstrating a Navistar International light semi-truck at the CES 2019, announced that it is on course teaming up with a number of Tier 1 suppliers like Cummins to achieve the integration of powertrain and autonomous driving system.

TuSimple, funded by NVIDIA and Sina, is the world's only autonomous trucking company that is working on “warehouse to warehouse” commercial freight transport. Its driverless trucks, which are available for fully autonomous driving on highways and urban streets, have been executing 3 to 5 commercial trips on a daily basis alongside three routes in Arizona, serving 12 clients in total, including some large global companies.

The startup claimed at the show that it plans to increase the truck number of the fleet deployed in the U.S. to 40 units from 11 units in the first half of 2019 to satisfy consumers' ever-growing demands on cargo delivery, which will then make the company the world's largest autonomous trucking solution provider. In addition, a new route stretching from Arizona to Texas will be put into operation in early 2019.

TuSimple's innovation is also characterized by its camera-centric perception solution, which boasts an effective sensing distance up to 1,000 meters, much longer than the 150-meter range available for most self-driving systems. Besides, the startup's autonomous driving system is able to panoramically perceive surroundings in real time and analyze the visual scenarios at the pixel level.

A research conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that the operation cost for long-haul freight transport industry will be reduced by 28% on an annual basis if the autonomous driving technology is widely integrated into trucks. TuSimple is ambitious to reform the global freight market by solving industrial pain points, cutting costs and lowering carbon emission.