It’s the new buzz word this year, autonomous driving. There had been some talk of future trucks and truck platooning in the past couple of years, but now truck technology seems to have made a quantum leap forward to the point where local authorities in both the US and now Europe are willing to let autonomous trucks out there in the wild with other road users.
The latest release sees a Mercedes Benz Actros driving autonomously around on a German autobahn with a happy politician in the passenger seat endorsing the testing program for autonomous trucks on public roads. This is a very similar scenario to the one we saw on Nevada’s roads earlier this year.
How very different this seems to the heavily stage managed futuristic event from just last year, where Benz showed a 2025 truck driving completely autonomously?:
