Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Aurora have achieved the next milestone in their partnership to jointly develop on-highway autonomous trucks in the U.S. A prototype of Volvo Trucks’ flagship, long-haul VNL model, integrated with the Aurora Driver technology, was revealed today, representing an important step towards launching fully autonomous Class 8 trucks commercially in North America.
Building on a rich history of safety and technology expertise, Volvo Autonomous Solutions is paving the way towards offering Volvo autonomous trucks to customers, as well as delivering comprehensive and seamless Transport as a Service (TaaS) solutions for autonomous commercial trucks, tailored to specific customer needs.
“Volvo Autonomous Solutions is proud to take our first, major steps toward the autonomous Volvo VNL in North America,” said Nils Jaeger, president of Volvo Autonomous Solutions. “Our long-standing customer base and their priorities are at the forefront of our path forward in shaping autonomous trucking. We strongly believe in a future in which safe, sustainable, efficient transport solutions are essential for any society to prosper, and autonomous commercial trucking is an important piece of that transformation.”
Volvo has already put autonomous trucks into service in Norway and its home Sweden. However, they’ve generally been limited to short, narrowly defined routes. In theory, the new prototype could handle the longer distances and varied conditions necessary to shuttle payloads between North American cities.