FOR ALL THE hoopla surrounding self-driving passenger cars, there’s actually a more pertinent problem that autonomous vehicle technologists are working to solve: bringing self-driving technology to long-haul trucks.

Trucking isn’t cheap. It costs an average of $1.69 per mile to operate a long-haul truck, and about 40 percent of that represents the driver’s salary. Meanwhile, truck drivers are hard to find, with one estimate suggesting that the U.S. freight industry currently faces a shortage of 100,000 drivers—and that could triple by 2026 as e-commerce continues to push the demand for freight higher.

Trucking is also dangerous. Large trucks were involved in more than 4,700 fatalities in 2017, an increase of nine percent over 2016, despite an overall decline in passenger vehicle deaths. As a result, “truck driver” is now classified as the most dangerous job in America.

One solution to these challenges is clear, if complicated: have some trucks drive themselves, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to fill the existing driver shortage and increase safety levels. But building self-driving trucks is no trivial task.

Making Trucks Fully Autonomous
TuSimple is at the forefront of this effort. The company, based in both San Diego and China, already uses self-driving trucks to make commercial deliveries, primarily in Arizona.

Founded in 2015 by President & CTO Xiaodi Hou, TuSimple now employs about 400 people between its two headquarters and makes three to five delivery trips per day, each one about 100 miles in length. These trips are largely used to generate testing data for TuSimple’s deep learning algorithms, which are constantly working to master the rules of the road, but they’re also making money.