F3 Chat: Can Autonomous Trucks End Our Supply Chain Woes?

This fireside chat recap is from Day 1 of FreightWaves' F3 Virtual Experience. 

FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Can autonomous trucks end our supply chain woes?

DETAILS: Plus' COO discusses the timeline of deploying autonomous trucking technology, what logistics providers are currently using driverless trucks and the job impact autonomous trucks will have on the industry in the future.

INTERVIEWER AND SPEAKER: Grace Sharkey, staff writer at FreightWaves, and Shawn Kerrigan, COO and co-founder of Plus.

BIO: Under Kerrigan's direction, Plus is developing self-driving trucks to enable the large-scale commercialization of autonomous transport. Prior to Plus, Kerrigan was CTO and co-founder of a hardware and software company in the solar industry. His earlier experience includes investment work at Bridgewater Associates, as well as strategy and operations work at McKinsey & Company. 

KEY QUOTES FROM KERRIGAN:

"We have taken our level 4 technology and have deployed it into trucks today. The driver is there and supports the system while it is in operation. The system is there to improve fuel economy and driver comfort in those [highway driving] conditions. It's different from a fully driverless system. … That is still some time away."

"The feedback we have gotten from the system is overwhelmingly positive because our system can handle a lot of driving on the highway, everything from stop-and-go traffic to merging traffic, all sorts of conditions that are stressful for driving. We have actually come across a number of conditions we didn't anticipate as being such large benefits, for instance, the performance of the systems in windy and gusty conditions."

"Step 1 is what we released this year, which is taking our autonomous technology and deploying it through PlusDrive. … Then as that system proves out over billions of miles of experience and proves the real safety of the technology, we think that will be a key building block towards fully autonomous trucks."

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