Delivering on Autonomous Transport

Einride ramps up industry partnerships and on-road demos of its all-electric self-driving truck that's missing one thing: a cab for the drivers.

“Data is the most efficient propellant.” This expression underpins the founding in 2016 of the Swedish startup Einride. The fledgling tech company currently is partnering with well-established transport-intensive companies, at an increasingly accelerated rate, to run its cab-less autonomous truck, the T-pod, at their facilities and even on public roads. These activities are coordinated by intelligent routing software that integrates customer data, traffic data, vehicle data, etc., to optimize delivery time, battery life and energy consumption.

The first commercial deployment of the T-pod, which Einride claims is the first truck specifically designed for electric propulsion and autonomous driving, occurred in spring 2019 at a DB Schenker facility in Jönköping, Sweden. Ericsson and Telia made the installation of the autonomous electric transportation (AET) system possible via 5G-based connectivity at the site.