Einride is a Swedish company who has built a prototype showing off their T-Log, an electric, self-driving vehicle which can carry logs and navigate through rural roads to transport those goods. It is called T-Log and its sole purpose is to move logs from one place to another. Considering that Sweden is the birthplace of Ikea, hauling logs from one place to another is big business and having an autonomous vehicle perform that tasks might just be the most efficient way.
The T-Log can carry up to 16 tonnes of logs and can navigate through rural roads. Einride uses NVidia’s chips to enable the T-Log to achieve Level 4 SAE self-driving capabilities. Based on the battery pack capacity, Einride says that the T-Log has a range of up to 200km.
Having autonomous trucks means fewer drivers are required. Most of these trips performed for long-haul movement of goods tend to wear out drivers. In Europe, the law is clear that drivers can only drive for a certain amount of hours. In other parts of the world, enforcement isn’t as good hence a lot of drivers tend to work past their recommended hours in order to meet deadlines or earn a little extra. This causes extreme fatigue and is one of the causes of accidents.
The trucking industry is definitely ripe for the taking especially with self-driving trucks which even Tesla is aiming to build. Glimpses of the future which include movies also depict that the first industry to go full autonomous and expand is the trucking industry as there is a real business case there.
