Daimler Truck North America has started delivering its latest flagship on-highway trucks to the autonomous testing fleet of Torc Robotics, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck. These trucks are based on the recently unveiled Fifth Generation Freightliner Cascadia, which was introduced last year.

The autonomous-ready version of the new Freightliner flagship is equipped with redundant safety features such as braking and steering and is intended for series production.

Daimler Truck North America says it was the first in the industry to develop a scalable, powertrain-agnostic, redundant autonomous vehicle platform. To enable SAE Level 4 autonomous driving, the company has purposefully designed and built redundancy into the Freightliner Cascadia platform for safety-critical systems for safe, driverless operations.

With more than 1,500 engineering requirements, all translated into features, and a second set of electronically controlled systems like an integrated power network, the autonomous-ready Cascadia sets an industry standard for autonomous systems integration, the company says.

In addition to key features for increased aerodynamics and more business efficiency, the new truck offers expanded capabilities for the Detroit Assurance Suite of Safety Systems, an all-new Intelligent Braking Control System as well as Dual Stage Intelligent LED Headlights.

The newest version of the Freightliner’s on-highway truck also delivers a greater than 35% fuel economy improvement since the model’s first introduction in 2007. Daimler Truck North America installs all essential compute and sensor kits during the vehicle production process. This preparation allows Torc Robotics to integrate its virtual driver seamlessly upon delivery.

In addition to existing test routes in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona, these trucks will also be tested in autonomous mode on a new lane in Texas between Laredo and Dallas mainly on I-35.

There is significant freight volume moving between Laredo and Dallas, connecting major cities such as San Antonio and Austin. Torc recently announced that it has signed a leasing agreement for an autonomous hub in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This hub will serve as the operational base for its autonomous testing efforts, customer freight pilots, and future commercialization. Torc is driving toward productization, positioning itself to scale and commercialize safe, robust autonomous trucking solutions on this busy freight corridor under real-world conditions.

In 2024, Torc reached another milestone by successfully completing driver-out test runs on a multi-lane test track in Texas. As a next step, Daimler Truck and Torc will further develop autonomous trucks to safely achieve the driver-out capability on public roads.

Daimler Truck and Torc aim to enter the US market with SAE Level 4 autonomous trucks by 2027. In this application, the autonomous driving system takes over the entire dynamic driving task between two freight hubs.