Waymo has announced it will focus its resources on autonomous ride-hailing technologies, pushing back development of its trucking platform.
The company, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, has been working with Daimler Truck North America (DTNA) in developing the Waymo Via autonomous trucking platform.
“Given the tremendous momentum and substantial commercial opportunity we’re seeing on the ride-hailing front, we’ve made the decision to focus our efforts and investment on ride-hailing,” Waymo said in an update. “With our decision to focus on ride-hailing, we’ll push back the timeline on our commercial and operational efforts on trucking, as well as most of our technical development on that business unit.
“We’ll continue our collaboration with our strategic partner, Daimler Truck North America (DTNA), to advance technical development of an autonomous truck platform. Both our companies share the common goal of improving road safety and efficiency for fleet customers, so we’ll follow through with the platform investments we’ve made to create a redundant chassis to facilitate autonomous trucking. We look forward to continuing to bring together our autonomous tech with DTNA’s autonomous-ready Freightliner Cascadia platform and exploring the potential of future platforms. Our ongoing investment in advancing Waymo Driver capabilities, especially on freeway, will directly translate to trucking and benefit its development efforts.”
The company said it continues to see commercial opportunities for autonomous trucking.
“We continue to see a significant future commercial opportunity for our trucking solution alongside other commercial applications of the Waymo Driver,” the update said. “Laser-focusing on ride-hailing today puts us, our partners, and our customers in a strong position to be successful in the future across all of the business lines we pursue over time, showcasing the breadth of the Waymo Driver.”
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