Toronto-based autonomous vehicle startup Waabi is powering the new Volvo VNL autonomous truck.
“Autonomy has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in the transport industry, including safety, efficiency, and capacity.”
The integration follows Waabi teaming up with the Swedish automaker (also one of its investors) earlier this year to build and commercialize self-driving trucks. Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun told BetaKit when the partnership was announced that the deal was “a massive step forward” and the last piece the startup needed to build a solution that can scale. Now, her company’s core offering, Waabi Driver, has been successfully integrated into a Volvo truck that is designed with redundant systems for safe autonomous operations.
“The future of autonomous trucking hinges on three critical areas: autonomous technology that is safe, scalable, and can deliver on customer needs; hardware that is purpose-built for autonomous operations from the ground up; and a commercial deployment model that solves problems in the supply chain without added friction,” Urtasun said in a statement.
In a separate statement, Volvo’s president of autonomous solutions Nils Jaeger said these kinds of partnerships play an important role in both advancing autonomous technology and building a broader ecosystem to support commercial deployment.
“Autonomy has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in the transport industry, including safety, efficiency, and capacity,” Jaeger said. “By working together, we are laying the groundwork for a more resilient future for freight.”
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Waabi appointed Lior Ron, the co-founder and CEO of Uber’s freight operations arm, to COO in August, as it targeted human-free deployment of its self-driving trucks by the end of the year. Urtasun continued that thread while revealing the Volvo truck at TechCrunch Disrupt, saying her company has the potential to be the first to commercialize self-driving trucks without a human safety observer.
Waabi partnered with Uber Freight in 2023 to bundle its Waabi Driver with Uber Freight’s logistics platform, marketplace, and autonomous trucking operations to create a driver-as-a-service solution. Waabi-powered trucks for Uber Freight have been regularly deployed in Texas, between Dallas and Houston, and Urtasun said the two companies are looking to expand joint operations.
Waabi has focused on United States pilots because Canada does not yet have the regulatory framework to support on-road testing for its tech, according to Urtasun. At Toronto Tech Week, the CEO called for the Canadian government to quickly bring forward a regulatory framework to ensure the responsible deployment of AI-powered physical technologies such as self-driving vehicles.
Feature image courtesy Waabi.