Stuttgart, Germany / Mountain View, USA — Daimler Trucks and Waymo have signed a broad, global, strategic partnership to deploy autonomous SAE L4 technology. Their initial effort will combine Waymo’s industry-leading automated driver technology with a unique version of Daimler’s Freightliner Cascadia, to enable autonomous driving.
Waymo brings over a decade of experience building the World’s Most Experienced Driver, having driven over 20 million miles on public roads across 25 U.S. cities and 15 billion miles in simulation. Daimler Trucks North America, Daimler Trucks’ U.S. subsidiary, the parent company of the Freightliner brand and the U.S. market leader in commercial vehicle manufacturing, provides their experience in developing state of the art Class 8 vehicles.
Both Waymo and Daimler Trucks share the common goal of improving road safety and efficiency for fleet customers. The autonomous Freightliner Cascadia truck, equipped with the Waymo Driver, will be available to customers in the U.S. in the coming years. Waymo and Daimler Trucks will investigate expansion to other markets and brands in the near future.
Martin Daum, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG and Member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG said: “As the leader of our industry, Daimler Trucks is the pioneer of automated trucking. In recent years, we have achieved significant progress on our global roadmap to bringing series-produced highly automated trucks to the road. With our strategic partnership with Waymo as the leader in autonomous driving, we are taking another important step towards that goal. This partnership complements Daimler Trucks’ dual strategy approach, of working with two strong partners to deliver autonomous L4 solutions that are seamlessly integrated with our best-in-class trucks, to our customers.”
Roger Nielsen, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG, President and CEO of Daimler Trucks North America LLC said: “The combination of increased road freight volumes and the need and vision of fleet operators for highly automated trucks, is what fuels our relentless pursuit of innovation. We are pushing engineering solutions that strive above all to increase safety and help our customers improve business efficiencies. Based on our collaboration with Waymo, we will be in the unique position to be able to provide our fleet customers with a choice among the best solutions for their individual requirements.”
John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo said: “We have the highest regard for Daimler’s engineering skills and broad global truck product portfolio, and so we look forward to scaling the Waymo Driver, together with our new partner, to improve road safety and logistics efficiency on the world’s roadways.”
About Waymo
Waymo is an autonomous driving technology company with a mission to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going. Since our start as the Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009, Waymo has been focused on building the World’s Most Experienced Driver to improve the world’s access to mobility while saving thousands of lives now lost to traffic crashes. The Waymo Driver powers Waymo One, the world’s first fully driverless ride-hailing service, as well as Waymo Via, our trucking and local delivery service. To date, Waymo has driven over 20 million miles autonomously on public roads across 25 U.S. cities and driven over 15 billion miles in simulation. For more information visit www.waymo.com.
About Daimler Trucks & Buses
Daimler Trucks & Buses is one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle manufacturers, with more than 35 primary locations around the world and approximately 100,000 employees. The company brings seven vehicle brands under one roof: Mercedes-Benz (light, medium and heavy trucks, city buses, overland buses and coaches) and Setra (overland, long-distance and premium coaches) are its European traditional brands; North American brands include Freightliner Trucks (in weight classes 5 to 8 serving a wide range of commercial vehicle applications), Western Star (heavy and long-haul heavy-duty trucks) and Thomas Built Buses (light to medium weight buses); and Asian brands BharatBenz, based in Chennai, India (9- to 55-ton trucks, medium- and heavy-duty buses) and FUSO, headquartered in Japan (trucks and buses for Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Latin America).
Thus, Daimler Trucks & Buses offers its customers around the globe a broad portfolio of commercial vehicles, from minibusses to heavy trucks for specialized transport. In short: products and solutions for all who keep the world moving. More than 120 years ago, Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz laid the foundation for the modern transport industry. Over the past decades, Daimler’s Truck and Bus divisions have consistently set standards for the entire transportation industry – in terms of safety, fuel efficiency and driver and passenger comfort. Now it’s time for the next evolutionary step: emission-free, automated and connected driving. Daimler Trucks & Buses is working to bring these important technologies to volume series production, across brands, divisions and regions.
The company aims to take its vision of CO2-neutral transport and accident-free driving a major step closer and contribute to the sustainability of global goods and passenger transport. In 2019, Daimler Trucks & Buses delivered a total of around one-half million trucks and buses to customers. In 2019 sales for individual business units amounted to €40.2 billion at Daimler Trucks and €4.7 billion at Daimler Buses. EBIT came to €2.5 billion for Daimler Trucks and €283 million for Daimler Buses.
