Daimler Truck, a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz parent company, revealed its first autonomous truck demonstrator that it said will pave the way to fully driverless freight hauling by 2027.
The demonstrator is an all-electric version of Daimler’s popular Freightliner Cascadia models. The so-called eCascadia has been fitted with a suite of high-powered, long-range sensors that enable it to “see” its surrounding environment as well as a high-powered computer that can process the sensor data and make navigation decisions.
Daimler, which is working with Waymo and its own Torc subsidiary on autonomous systems, says the goal is to launch the trucks somewhere in the Southwest US, transporting goods from hub to hub as part of a middle-mile…