Truck Automation Players Take Las Vegas By Storm At Manifest 2022

We are awash with a myriad of conferences and symposiums about automated driving. There’s a lot of good offerings out there, but I’ve long been an advocate for events focusing specifically on automated trucking. There has been a modest degree of activity to this end in Europe, but given the high level of activity in Automated Driving Systems (ADS) for trucking in the U.S., a glaring gap that needs to be filled. To be more specific, what is needed are events which are not so much about the technology as about how an ADS truck can integrate into – and even transform – truck fleet operations.

Manifest 2022, which occurred in Las Vegas last week (and was also virtual), turned out to be a boon to those working the automated trucking space. Billed as “The Future of Logistics,” the program included panel discussions about supply chain, warehouse management, reverse logistics, drones, risk underwriting, warehouse robots, and freight visibility, as well as panels directly addressing truck ADS.  With such a broad scope, I was concerned that automated driving would be only a minor topic at the event.

I estimate that Manifest in-person attendance at The Paris Hotel was in the low hundreds; the pandemic effects were certainly in play. No doubt the smaller exhibitors seeking to “be known” would have preferred more foot traffic. But for those of us focused on automated trucking, virtually every key autonomy startup company was there in some form. By far the most striking aspect of the exhibition was seven fully automated trucks from seven different developers, lined up along the back wall of the exhibit hall. Trucks were on display from Einride, Embark, Gatik, Kodiak, Locomation, Plus, and TuSimple. Quite the showing!

Trucks On Nevada Highways

If you’re going to have an event including automated driving, there better be some demo’s. Plus was Manifest’s exclusive “Demo Partner,” running demonstrations of their PlusDrive product on nearby highways. I see PlusDrive is a “get it now” approach to truck automation. Currently the company is retrofitting customer trucks in the U.S. with a “driver-in” approach toward advancing full automation. No ADS developers today can safely remove the human driver from the cab because trucks sold currently do not have the SAE Level-4-ready redundancy that is required for fully driverless operations. Truck OEMs have partnered with ADS developers to bring this level of redundancy to market in the coming years, as has been widely reported elsewhere. Plus is unique in that the company is using their L4 system to operate the truck on a divided highway under the supervision of a company driver with customers like Amazon. Having a human in the loop as part of the safety case means that PlusDrive technically operates as an SAE Level 2 system. This allows fleets to receive some of the benefits of automation today, rather than waiting years for the driver-out solution. Plus says that the real-world experience collected with large numbers of PlusDrive-equipped trucks running the roads will be a valuable source of validation data, which combined with their simulation suite will allow the company to introduce fully validated commercial Level 4 trucks in the next few years. Since PlusDrive is a commercial product and operated by fleets, Plus also offered Manifest demo participants holding a Commercial Driver’s License the chance to drive the PlusDrive-equipped truck themselves. 

Industry Visionaries on Panels

Leaders and founders from the companies noted above, as well as Waymo and Daimler Trucks, participated in a set of interesting conference sessions.

A stellar set of industry veterans offered their perspectives in a session moderated by Blythe Brumleve, Owner, Digital Dispatch. These were Don Burnette, CEO & Co-Founder, Kodiak; Shawn Kerrigan, COO & Co-Founder, Plus; and Mike Reid, Chief Business Officer, Embark Trucks. When asked to elaborate on future plans, Don Burnette noted that they will be doing much longer runs during 2022, such as Los Angeles to Atlanta. Mike Reid said, “We’re targeting 2024 for driverless operations“ in the southwestern United States, the first time I’ve heard a specific date mentioned by Embark.

Another session was moderated by Joanna Butler, Director, Autonomous Cascadia Program, Daimler Trucks North America. Again, more industry veterans on-stage: Charlie Jatt, Head of Commercialization for Trucking, Waymo; Tekin Mericli, Co-Founder & CTO, Locomation; and Chuck Price, Chief Product Officer, TuSimple. Joanna Butler asked the guys about prospects for the next five to ten years in this space. Charlie Jatt said we should look at automated trucking as a “long gradual journey” and emphasized that “plenty of jobs will remain for drivers,” especially considering the ever-worsening truck driver shortage. Chuck Price noted that, “TuSimple will be expanding our fleet over the next 3+ years; this won’t be ‘at scale’ but will be ‘real driverless’ operations.” He added that, “We’re beyond R&D and into commercialization.” The panelists had confidence that truck manufacturers will soon launch L4-ready tractors as part of a multi-year process of scaling up automated trucking within freight carrier fleets. Tekin Meriçli said we can expect a “patchwork deployment” as the Operational Design Domain expands beyond the benign environments of the southern tier of the U.S. to more challenging environments, agreeing with others that this will be very gradual.

An Electric Vehicles session included Einride’s Founding Engineer and Technology Strategy Director Tomas Ohlson. Einride has commercialized a custom EV AV platform with no driver compartment, operating in both Europe and the U.S. Mr. Ohlson described their existing work in the U.S. with General Electric and their plans to expand their current routes.

A policy-focused panel session was moderated by Ariel Wolf, Counsel – Privacy, Cybersecurity and Transportation Technology, for the Self Driving Coalition for Safer Streets (which on the same day re-branded itself as the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association). Panelists were Christin Aizcorbe, VP Government Affairs, Velodyne Lidar; Wiley Deck, Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy, Plus; and Prashanthi Raman, Director, Government Affairs, Cruise. Wiley Deck noted that, “We’re an industry looking to be regulated by the Federal government, because it’s important to have a uniform set of rules in place for the whole country to follow to ensure the safe introduction of these new technologies.” Prashanthi Raman discussed the need for exemptions for the Cruise vehicle, which does not have traditional driver controls, thus being out of compliance with current Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. This will also be an issue for automated truck players, such as Einride, which don’t have a driver compartment. Panelists also stressed the need and urgency for USDOT to move forward on rulemaking to fully allow automated trucking (going beyond “guidance” provided several years ago in USDOT’s AV Policy 3.0). Wiley Deck also observed that, “As developers we are all working together to educate officials and the public as to the benefits of autonomous vehicles,” adding that even though some may compete in business they are committed to working together with regulators.

New Players, New Approaches

At Manifest, a new player emerged in the AV trucking space. The recently established startup Solo AVT is focused on building a Class 8 truck platform optimized for an electric powertrain and automated driving, going so far as to have no driver compartment. Solo CEO Graham Doorley said they are “starting from a clean slate,” noting that “significant efficiencies can be achieved by taking this approach, unhampered by traditional design and legacy constraints.” Doorley and his team have a heritage from the Waymo truck program, Tesla, and similar companies. Solo is exclusively focused on developing the hardware platform. 

There’s other approaches for driving trucks with no humans inside. Phantom Auto was at the event promoting their remote driver offering to freight movement in confined areas. They have ongoing operations running forklifts inside warehouses, trailer shifters in logistics yards, and moving containers at seaports. Phantom says their system delivers HD video at sub-100 millisecond latency, safely enabling remote vehicle operations at low speeds.

Notable Absences

There were several notable no-shows. There were no speakers or attendees from Aurora or Torc, as far as I know. Truck manufacturers had only a scant showing. (Aurora was highly visible the prior week: their co-founder Sterling Anderson keynoted at the SAE Government-Industry meeting in Washington, D.C. and the event was chaired by Aurora Safety Chief Nat Beuse.)

I had expected more of a showing from shippers and truck freight carriers as well. Representatives from Anheuser-Busch, PGT Trucking, and U.S. Xpress and were among those attending, and UPS and DHL each had exhibit booths. Maybe there were others. Overall, though, the showing from actual freight carriers was disappointing.

Then again, who says its vital to be at shows like this? Waymo, which didn’t bring a truck or have an exhibit, is in a league all its own: it is privately held and well capitalized. They have achieved key partnerships such as the recently announced JB Hunt alliance. They can plot their own path at their own timing.

Coming off the December announcement of a $228M Series A funding round, Robotic Research’s commercial arm, RR.AI, had several representatives attending, but no exhibit. They tell me a more substantial involvement at shows like this can be expected going forward.

Wrap Up

Manifest delivered an unprecedented gathering of leaders from ADS truck companies along with their automation capable trucks. Within a relaxed atmosphere, superb networking could be had with CEOs, CTOs, COOs, and Chief Engineers, etc. A surprising number of investors attended as well, nosing around for hidden gems among the startups.

Even with some shortcomings that were no doubt influenced by the ongoing pandemic, I’m a big fan of what the inaugural Manifest accomplished last week. Despite my concern that automated driving would only be a bit player at Manifest, that ball got hit out of the park.

I’m looking forward to this and other similar events over the next couple of years as commercial automated trucking shifts into gear.

Disclosure: I am an Advisor to Plus, RR.AI, and SoloAVT.